THE PROBLEM OF THE TREATMENT OF VENEREAL DISEASE IN THE MERCANTILE MARINE*

SAILORMEN are in some ways a race apart. They live together, a small cosmos, for long periods of time, with nothing around them but grey seas. No news of the outer world reaches them for many days at a time, and news when it does come is only of the main events. This causes the ordinary sailorman to be very circumscribed in his thoughts and conversation. After days of seafaring a port is entered, probably foreign and probably unpleasantly hot. The day is spent in painting the ship and in the evening the sailorman goes ashore to forget the dull monotony of the many days' voyaging. What does he find to engage his attention ? There is the ever-present saloon with its bright lights, fiery liquids, and painted ladies. There is the picture house, where inability to understand the captions does not necessarily render the picture uninteUigible. Even there, however, the seaman is not entirely free from the attentions of the ubiquitous fille de joie. There is no place in the world of which this picture is more true than the large South American ports, and so Para, Pemambuco, Buenos Aires, and Valparaiso import into Liverpool other articles than are shown on the ship's bill of lading. Again, the sailorman is bone lazy, thanks to the confined quarters in which he has to spend his life at sea, and to the dull monotony of his daily outlook. Even in such a fine city as Liverpool he spends his days, if the day be warm enough, propping up the Board of Trade offices or the Institute in which he has spent the night. The evenings, so long as the money lasts, are spent in the crowded bars not three minutes from his bed-oftentimes a wise precaution. But to these bars or, after closing