The first step in dealing with a contagious disease is to apply to it the recognized principles of notification.  Every new application of the principle, it is true, meets with opposition.  It is without practical result, it is an unwarranted inquisition into the affairs of the individual, it is a new tax on the busy medical practitioner, etc.  Certainly notification by itself will not arrest the progress of any infectious disease.  But it is an essential element in every attempt to deal with the prevention of disease.  Unless we know precisely the exact incidence, local variations, and temporary fluctuations of a disease we are entirely in the dark and can only beat about at random.  All progress in public hygiene has been accompanied by the increased notification of disease, and most authorities are agreed that such notification must be still further extended, any slight inconvenience thus caused to individuals being of trifling importance compared to the great public interests at stake.  It is true that so great an authority as Neisser has expressed doubt concerning the extension of notification to gonorrhoea; the diagnosis cannot be infallible, and the patients often give false names.  These objections, however, seem trivial; diagnosis can very seldom be infallible (though in this field no one has done so much for exact diagnosis as Neisser himself), and names are not necessary for notification, and are not indeed required in the form of compulsory notification of venereal disease which existed a few years ago in Norway.

The principle of the compulsory notification of venereal diseases seems to have been first established in Prussia, where it dates from 1835.  The system here, however, is only partial, not being obligatory in all cases but only when in the doctor’s opinion secrecy might be harmful to the patient himself or to the community; it is only obligatory when the patient is a soldier.  This method of notification is indeed on a wrong basis, it is not part of a comprehensive sanitary system but merely an auxiliary to police methods of dealing with prostitution.  According to the Scandinavian system, notification, though not an essential part of this system, rests on an entirely different basis.

The Scandinavian plan in a modified form has lately been established in Denmark.  This little country, so closely adjoining Germany, for some time followed in this matter the example of its great neighbor and adopted the police regulation of prostitution and venereal disease.  The more fundamental Scandinavian affinities of Denmark were, however, eventually asserted, and in 1906, the system of regulation was entirely abandoned and Denmark resolved to rely on thorough and systematic application of the sanitary principle already accepted in the country, although something of German influence still persists in the strict regulation of the streets and the penalties imposed upon brothel-keepers, leaving prostitution itself free.  The decisive