10 THE BEADSHAW LECTUBE 



house, and from contact with relatives already 

 infected. 



Syphilis. 



Another diathesis we were taught was the 

 syphilitic, but we know now that there is no 

 such thing as hereditary syphilis. This is an 

 inoculable disease, the organism causing which 

 was discovered by Schaudinn in 1905, and it may 

 be transmitted through the mother to her child 

 when the placental protection breaks down, but 

 there is no reliable evidence of its ever having 

 been carried on to a third generation. It is a 

 disease distributed by folly and reaped by 

 innocence, and those well-meaning people who 

 discovered in this disease a Divine scourge to be 

 carried on to the third and fourth generations 

 must be disappointed by its limits. The moment 

 the Spirochaeta pallid a was demonstrated, it 

 became evident that as the greater could not be 

 carried by the less, direct transmission from the 

 male to the ovum was out of court. The mother 

 must first be infected, though the disease may not 

 have been noticed, and Colles's law, which states 

 that a mother cannot be inoculated on the nipple 

 by her syphilitic infant, receives additional sup- 

 port by this discovery. It also emphasises the 



