540 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



syphilis, idiocy, insanity, and hereditary locomotor ataxy. But, 

 except for a few malcontents, the world has accepted that the 

 nature of the disease is known in its entirety. 



In the meanwhile, the means of diagnosis and the methods 

 of treatment of the disease have greatly improved. The Wasser- 

 man reaction has proved to be a means whereby the existence 

 of the disease can be recognised even after all symptoms have 

 disappeared, and when an immunity has been established. But 

 it is not operative until the disease has progressed, though its 

 value in later diagnosis and in controlling treatment is vast. 

 The treatment of the disease, too, has made a great advance in 

 Ehrlich's discovery of salvarsan, or " 606." It is the outcome of 

 an evolution of knowledge. The history of the treatment of 

 syphilis would fill the pages of a profoundly interesting book. 

 It is not known who first noted the curative powers of mercury, 

 arsenic, antimony, and their compounds in this disease ; nor is 

 it known when the discovery was made. It ranks with that of 

 the effects of quinine and arsenic on the parasite of malaria. 

 Both discoveries were blind shots in the dark which hit the 

 mark. For more than a century, compounds of mercury have 

 been administered in syphilis and the disease cured by them. 

 In the Early Victorian age it became fashionable to give it com- 

 monly to children as a cure for all trivial ailments, and mercurial 

 stomatitis and teeth disorders were frequent. But until the last 

 few years the slow method of treating syphilis by mercury, a 

 treatment extending over a period of two years or more in 

 every case, followed by a year's dosing with iodide of potassium, 

 was the rule. Then the known effects of arsenic on the pro- 

 tozoal parasite of sleeping sickness led to pharmacological 

 research and the production of a complex compound of that 

 metal was the result ; it was named Atoxyl, and was tried on 

 animals infected with trypanosomes (the cause of sleeping sick- 

 ness) ; for it was realised that a drug more rapid in its action 

 was required for those affections which kill more rapidly than 

 syphilis. Step by step these compounds were improved upon 

 until at last Ehrlich found his salvarsan. Perhaps its effects 

 are not all that were claimed at first, but it signals the beginning 

 of a great advance in the treatment of syphilis, for it rapidly 

 curtails the more obvious symptoms of the disease, and, when 

 combined with mercury, leads to a quicker cure than was 

 formerly possible. 



