DR. J. W. BALLANTYNE'S PAPER 349 



speak of it ; it is revolting to have to study its effects ; 

 it is heart-rending to watch, as we doctors have to do, 

 its maleficent and accursed mark being imprinted on 

 the bodies of the mother and her child ; but it is time, 

 it is long past time, to tear away the veil which 

 prudery and what is wrongly called common decency 

 has thrown over this subject, and to show it in all its 

 loathsome nakedness and horrible reality. We are 

 terrified when we brush up against a man who has 

 come from a smallpox patient's bedside ; we shudder 

 at the risks we run from the dried up sputum of the 

 victims of consumption which may be floating in the 

 air we breathe ; a thrill of horror runs over the whole 

 land when there is news that a case of plague has 

 reached Liverpool or that a man has died of cholera 

 in London : but if we only realized it the results are 

 far more deadly when a husband infects his wife with 

 syphilis and the misery entailed is infinitely greater. 

 To my mind the most pathetic words in medicine are 

 syphilis insontium (syphilis of the innocent), just as the 

 most hideous book on medicine is the so-called atlas 

 of venereal diseases. Syphilis is sometimes spoken 

 of as a hereditary malady ; it is an insult to the name 

 heredity to call it so. It is a contagious disease, 

 which, when it affects a woman about to become a 

 mother, has the most certainly maleficent effect upon 

 the fruit of the womb. It is a commonplace of the 

 text-books of medicine and midwifery that when a 

 man infects his wife with this disease there may 

 follow seven or eight abortions (each one of which is, 

 of course, an ante-natal death), two or three dead- 

 births, and finally the birth of a few infants with the 

 disease in so attenuated a form (the virus having, so to 

 say, tired itself out) that they may continue to live 

 for some years a damaged existence in the world. 

 No wonder Fournier has been stung into using the 

 expression "horrible mortuary tables "to describe the 

 statistics of ante-natal syphilis. One cannot use the 



