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"It is a suspicious fact," says Dr. Gumpert, "that since the census of 1934 there has been no publication at all of general figures on the growth or decline of this type of disease. ... In 1934 there was recorded an annual increase of 225,000 in the number of cases, the total number of those being treated being about 500.000." Only figures Dr. Gumpert could find for the last six years were those from the State Insurance Health Centres of the Rhine Provinces, which reported 19,603 cases of venereal disease for 1936, 31,914 for 1938.
Lunacy. More appalling than physical breakdown is the spread of mental decay, says Dr. Gumpert. For the number of lunatics in German hospitals rose from 185,000 in 1923 to 346,000 in 1936. And new Nazi treatment for lunacy goes far beyond old-fashioned straitjackets and padded cells.
"No more capitulation to the psychopaths!" cried a German psychiatrist in a recent issue of the Militärarzt (Military Doctor). "We must lay our hands on them ... [in a] pitiless campaign. . . . We have no time to lose. . . . They must be collected in the concentration camps.."
If any British doctors chanced to read the Militärarzt, this violent attitude toward mental patients must have struck them with grim humor. For in the Lancet, every week since the year began, there have been articles and letters from psychiatrists coldly analyzing "Hitler as a Psychopath." And in the last year no fewer than 14 top-flight U. S. doctors have dissected the Führer's personality at long distance.