The Attempted Control of Venereal Disease in the Army of Mid-Victorian England

While Britain's leaders were reforming the traditional institutions of Mid-Victorian England by the tests of economy, efficiency, and expediency during the Age of Improvement, the Army was deliberately ignored. Florence Nightingale, acclaimed for her valiant services in Army hospitals, and Sidney Herbert, a reforming War Minister, now prodded a reluctant Government into creating the Army Sanitary Commission of 1857. A Select Committee headed by Lord Clarence Paget, First Secretary to the Admiralty, was created to devise a bill for the control of venereal diseases in the Army and Navy. A report from Devonport indicated a decline in the venereal disease rate for 2.15 percent in 1864 to 0.76 percent in 1866. A committee of medical specialists in contagious diseases reported in 1868 that the term syphilis “at the present time included every variety of constitutional venereal disease.”