DR. F. W. MOTT'S PAPER 385 



did not do everything and they were quite willing to come 

 and pay into the club again. On the matter of the work- 

 ing mother, Dr. Robertson, the Medical Officer of Health 

 in Birmingham, in 1910 had a list of factory working 

 mothers and he found that the infant mortality was lower 

 amongst the factory-working mothers than with the non- 

 working mothers. This very much astonished everybody, 

 but he put it down to the fact that the mother who worked 

 in the factory had some shillings a week extra for food 

 and the necessaries required in the home, and also to the 

 fact that the mother who would go to work rather than 

 see her children need had more grit and energy than the 

 mother who would not go to work but stopped at home. 

 But no one could visit all these homes without realizing 

 that the strain of factory life did affect the expectant 

 mother. One woman told her that for forty-three years 

 she had been engaged in work which had necessitated four 

 muscular movements only, and surely that could not fail 

 to have an effect on both the body and mind of any mother? 



CONGENITAL SYPHILIS AS A CAUSE OF 

 INFANT MORTALITY AND THE PRE- 

 VENTIVE MEASURES NECESSARY. 



BY F. W. MOTT, M.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.P. 



Physician to Charing Cross Hospital and Pathologist to the London County Asylums. 



FOR sixteen years past, as pathologist to the 

 London County Asylums, I have been engaged (during 

 other researches) in showing that the essential cause of 

 general paralysis of the insane is syphilis congenital 

 or acquired. I was led to this conclusion by the study 

 of a large number of cases of general paralysis occur- 

 ring in early life, thus precluding the possibility of 

 the mental disease in these cases being caused by 

 alcoholism, sexual excess, and mental stress in its 

 many forms, which were the causes usually associated 

 with general paralysis. The age of the onset of the 

 mental symptoms in the majority of these juvenile 

 cases precluded the probability of syphilis having 

 been acquired. Ten years ago I made careful 



