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When nearly twenty years ago we the first, medical journal in the British Isles we believe to discuss the subject objectively dealt with it we pleaded for more research, and on the rare occasions on which we have since returned to the subject we have renewed our plea but without avail. That is not to say that our initiative has proved entirely sterile, for we may take credit for the fact (even if it be not accredited to us) that a Joint Committee of the British Medical Association and the Magistrates Association was set up to review the subject, which it did, in realistic terms. and this in turn has now been followed by the Wolfenden Report, which has at least advised a more human and enlightened approach to the whole problem.

But this is not enough. We must know what it is that goes amiss in the development of these individuals to deflect the second most powerful human instinct to sterile and, to most of us, disgusting channels. If it is a failure or an imbalance of endocrine secretion it would obviously be possible to supply the deficiency at the right time and thus prevent the deviation. One reason for this indifference to the subject may be that to some medicine and morals seem to be here.in conflict. This antagonism we believe, however, to be false. Another may be that the whole subject is felt to be unsavoury, but if we doctors were to confine our researches to savoury subjects we would soon find ourselves unemployed. One thing is quite clear. As doctors. and therefore presumably as scientists, we cannot dismiss the matter by merely bellowing our disgust whenever our susceptibilities are outraged. Nor can we consent to blame and punish our homosexuals any more than we blame and punish the mentally ill. Such an attitude in this year of grace with satellites circling the moon is simply not good enough. We shall have to do better than that.

Lambert. Carl. (1954): Med. Press, 232, 523

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