PHYSICAL DEFECTS AND CHARACTERISTICS: VENEREAL DISEASE
Our data concerning veneral disease came not only from the individual interviewed, but in those cases where the men had been institutionalized, also from official records. Between 20 and 37 per cent of the prison group and sex-offender groups had had gonorrhea; a far smaller proportion (14 per cent) of the control group had been similarly infected. It is of interest to note that multiple infection is not common: whereas about one fifth to one quarter of most sex-offender groups had one infection, only 5 to 8 per cent had two, and about 3 to 5 per cent had three. There appears to be no relation between the type of offense and the incidence of gonorrhea.
There is, however, an interesting positive correlation between the incidence of gonorrhea and the number of premarital coital companions. Among the control group, 5 per cent of those with one premarital companion had had gonorrhea; 14 per cent of those with from two to five companions; 20 per cent of those with from six to 20 companions; and so on until we find that of those with 76 or more coital companions about one third had contracted gonorrhea. The prison group exhibits the same trend only the percentages are always larger by roughly ten percentage points. The sex offenders, taken as a whole, have figures paralleling those of the prison group up to a point and then there is an unexpected plateau in the incidence: any increase in number of coital companions beyond the category of 21 to 75 does not increase the incidence of infection, which stabilized at nearly 40 per cent.
There was a much lower incidence of syphilis than gonorrhea among the comparative groups, the range being from 3 per cent for the control group to 18 per cent for homosexual offenders vs. adults. The highest figures were shown by our two most premaritally promiscuous groups, the heterosexual and homosexual offenders vs. adults, but aside from this the number of coital (or homosexual) partners seems unrelated to the incidence. Multiple syphilitic infections were rare: only three groups had as many as 1 per cent of their constituents with this misfortune. The only relationship between type of offense and incidence of syphilis is a tendency for all three homosexual-offender groups to cluster at the “high” end of the range, ranking first, fourth, and fifth. The promiscuity of the homosexual offenders vs. adults explains their position, but the position of the other two groups may be due to the fact that both sexes were sources of exposure.
Syphilis, like gonorrhea, is more common among those who have been more frequently exposed to infection by having larger numbers of premarital coital companions. The relationship, however, is not as clear-cut as it was for gonorrhea. In part this lack of clarity is owing to the fact that syphilis is a much less common disease and hence, like all statistical rarities, subject to great fluctuation when small samples are involved. Thus, for example, in the control group the incidence of syphilis drops to zero in our most promiscuous categories. Other complications involve female prostitution and male homosexuality, but a volume on sex offenders is no place for an extended analysis of venereal disease transmission; such a study may constitute a later journal article.
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