TRANSMISSION OF SYPHILIS 51 



of young men at West Point from two to five per cent are prob- 

 ably syphilitic. In the U. S. Army, as a whole, Vedder believes 

 an estimate of 16 per cent of syphilis among the whites is con- 

 servative, and his statistics show that the per cent increases 

 steadily with the ages of the enlisted men, and as the years of 

 service increase. Among enlisted negroes, who are notoriously 

 more syphilitic in civil life than are whites, syphilis is two or 

 three times as prevalent as among white enlisted men. " This 

 study confirms observations that have already been published 

 indicating that syphilis is so prevalent among negroes that it is 

 possibly the greatest single factor in the production of disability 

 and high mortality rates among the race." The figures obtained 

 from an examination of 531 Porto Rican enlisted men are most 

 startling of all over 50 per cent show evidence of being probably 

 syphilitic. 



Transmission. Syphilis is fundamentally a venereal disease, 

 transmitted by sexual intercourse, and over 90 per cent of cases 

 are undoubtedly of such origin. It is a common belief that this 

 is the only way in which the disease can be acquired, and some- 

 times an unjust stigma of shame and disgrace is attached to a 

 perfectly innocent case of syphilis. As already remarked, in 

 the vast majority of cases the parasites are directly acquired 

 from their usual habitat in the underworld, but over 20,000 

 cases of innocent syphilis have been reported, and five per cent 

 of infections occurring in the army are of innocent origin. A 

 horrible case is on record where seven young women at a church 

 social in Philadelphia acquired syphilis from kissing a young 

 man who had a syphilitic sore on his lip. A case recently oc- 

 curred in one of our western cities which was ultimately traced to 

 the eating of apples sold by an Italian who was in the habit of 

 spitting on his fruits and rubbing them on his sleeve to shine them. 

 Public drinking cups, public towels and soiled bed-linen serve 

 admirably as temporary abodes for the spirochaetes of syphilis, 

 but fortunately these curses of civilization are in most places 

 abolished by law. Unsanitary barbers and dentists can easily 

 spread infection, and dentists and physicians often themselves 

 contract the disease from handling syphilitic patients, the 

 spirochsetes readily entering the smallest cut or abrasion of the 

 skin. Midwives and wet nurses are likewise exposed to infection 

 from diseased babies, as are the babies from diseased nurses. 



