Note 668 — Chapter X · ABOLITION AND DISEASE

I have throughout this volume refrained from attaching much importance to mere opinions as to the results of experience with either of the policies in question. It is indeed amazing to observe what definite convictions are based on brief or one-sided experience or on hearsay evidence, and this is true of abolitionists and regulationists alike. Though opinion is thus of little weight, a change of opinion forced by the failure of prophesied ill results to materialize may be not without significance; and of such change there is abundant evidence in both Christiania and Copenhagen. In the former, as late as 1898, a discussion in the Norwegian Medical Society (reported in Prostitution i Kristiania, 1899) showed the existence of regulationists in the medical profession. Their views were vigorously combated by City Physician Bentzen and others who proved that regulated Norwegian towns were liable to precisely the same fluctuations that followed abolition at Christiania (pp. 36–38). By the time of my visit (fourteen years later) the voice of the regulationists—so I was everywhere assured—had practically become silent—a change of attitude hardly open to misconstruction. In Copenhagen the issue is more recent and more controversial; but the trend of opinion appears to be in the same direction. I was assured that it would be practically impossible to find a physician who desired a return to the old system; Professor Ehlers, a distinguished specialist, declared, “There is absolutely no professional sentiment any longer in favor of regulation; the situation is probably better and most certainly no worse”; another physician stated: “Nothing has been lost, even if it is not yet easy to prove what has been gained”; Dr. Hoff, the Health Officer, assured me that regulation sentiment had entirely died out among the medical profession. But the best proof is after all the steady encroachment of abolition: Copenhagen would not have imitated Christiania had abolition aggravated conditions there; now Stockholm is about to follow suit: does not this indicate a growing and spreading disbelief in the efficacy of regulation and a growing confidence in the advantages of abolition?