- portance to human progress were taking root in the
prepared soil of the older civilisation—questions which were of absorbing interest. During the following twenty years the responsibility of the Christian physician assumed to me an ever-deepening significance.
After a refreshing tour in the lovely Lake District, arranged by my old friend Herman Bicknell, we attended the Social Science Congress held in Bristol in September of 1869. This was indeed a noteworthy experience. I was the guest with Miss Mary Carpenter of her relations Mr. and Mrs. Thomas. One morning Miss Carpenter came into my room with her hands full of papers, saying, 'These papers refer to a subject that you must take up. It is to be discussed at a sectional meeting to-day, from which all women are excluded; but you, as a doctor, have a right to be present, and will be admitted, and you must attend.'
This formed my introduction to that tremendous campaign against the unequal standard of sexual morality known as the repeal of the 'Contagious Diseases Acts,' in which for the following seventeen years I was to take an active part, and which, from its extended bearings, moulded the whole of my future life.
The study of the papers thus brought to my notice by Miss Carpenter was a revelation to me. Perhaps happily for me, during my past life and medical experiences I had never fully realised the wide bearing of this subject and the inevitable
