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Unfortunately, there are no satisfactory figures for the civil population showing how many persons per thousand per year acquire syphilis or gonorrhea, to be compared with the known figures for the onset of such infections in the army. Arguing from general considerations, however, there seems to be no reason to suppose that the army will show a higher proportion of infections than civilians.
Hereditary congenital syphilis belongs to the ordinary pathology of the disease and is a chief element in its social danger since it is responsible for an enormous infantile mortality. The risks of extragenital infection in the professional activity of doctors, midwives and wet-nurses is also universally recognized.
If a series of children, one after the other, suffer from inherited syphilis, it is almost invariably the case that the mother has been infected. In contrast to the acquired form, inherited syphilis is remarkable for the absence of any primary stage, the infection being a general one from the outset.
Again a woman with syphilis may remain childless through all the years of her active infection, and finally, in her first pregnancy, give birth to a healthy child, even though she still has the disease in latent form herself. Still another may have a miscarriage or two and then bear one or two healthy children, only to have the last child, years after her infection, be stillborn and syphilitic.
+Alcohol.+ Alcohol in any form, in particular, has been shown by extensive experience, especially since the study of the nervous system in syphilis has been carried to a fine point, to have an especially dangerous effect on the syphilitic.
But there is one person within the family who should, as a rule, know of his infection if it is still in the contagious period, since it is almost impossible to secure coöperation otherwise. No matter how painful it may be, a person with syphilis, if advised to do so by his physician, should tell husband or wife the true state of affairs.
Unified action against syphilis and gonorrhea as public health problems is as important as unified action on the problems of railroad control, child labor, or corporate monopoly.
Nobody knows how much syphilis is cured, partly because nobody knows how much syphilis there really is, and partly because it is almost an axiom that few, except persons of high intelligence and sufficient means, stick to treatment until they can be discharged as cured.
The general acceptance of the fact that syphilis and gonorrhoea are diseases, and not necessarily crimes or sins, is the condition for any practical attempt to deal with this question from the sanitary point of view which is now taking the place of the antiquated and ineffective police point of view.
But the test must be well done, by a large hospital or through a competent physician or specialist, and the results interpreted to the patient by the physician and not by the laboratory that does the test, or in the light of the patient's own half-knowledge of the matter. The Treatment of Syphilis
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