I soon found that social questions of vital importance 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 social degradation produced by a double standard of morality. My eyes were now suddenly opened, never to be closed again, to that direful purchase of women which is really the greatest obstacle to the progress of the race. Ignorant as I then was of the various aspects of the Contagious Diseases Acts, I instantly perceived their injustice, and at once accepted the difficult mission Miss Carpenter laid upon me. It was hoped by some members of the congress that a resolution would be passed supporting the one-sided Contagious Diseases Acts legislation, against which a strong opposition was beginning to arise, and I resolved that the voice of one member of the congress, at any rate, should support the foundation of morality—viz. equal justice. I therefore attended the section, held at the Blind Asylum, sitting far back in that assemblage of men. I soon found, however, to my immense relief and gratitude, that the cause of justice was in able and vigorous male hands, led by Professor Francis Newman; so I gladly withdrew from a painful position in that sectional meeting, my advocacy not being needed.