ON SYPHILIS AND GONORRHCEA 211 



is secured, and thence finding its way along the lines of 

 least resistance, it reaches, by way of the lymphatic vessels, 

 the gland or glands, where its further progress is chal- 

 lenged and, it may be, arrested, but where, if allowed to 

 pass, it secures an entrance into the lymphatic circulation, 

 and subsequently into the circulation proper and the 

 textures of the body generally. 



But, while this may describe the usual line of attack of 

 the disease, we are persuaded that the invasion of the 

 system may be accomplished by, at any rate, one other 

 direct route, and this route we would describe as nervine, 

 and thus the primary sore in its processes of destruction 

 and disintegration of the textures involved in the area of 

 infection lays open not only the lymph spaces and vessels, 

 perhaps with the blood vessels, but the nerves distributed 

 to the part with their inter-neurilemmar spaces, into which 

 and along which the virus filters or develops by the growth 

 of its specific microbe in the medium of the cerebro-spinal 

 fluid into the interior of the cerebro-spinal cavity, where 

 it is at liberty to repeat itself in endless generations or 

 until its pabulum is exhausted and immunity attained. 



An entrance having been thus effected along the nerves 

 leading from the scene of the primary sore by the specific 

 virus, the cerebro-spinal fluid having afforded it a ready- 

 made culture medium, it is at liberty to attack not only 

 the nervous system, for which it is said to have a peculiar, 

 we might say, morbid affinity, but every organ and tex- 

 ture of the body with which that system is connected, 

 whether by its afferent, efferent, or association trunks and 

 fibres, ganglionic cells and processes, systemic and sympa- 

 thetic. 



In the quasi-enclosed region in which the cerebro-spinal 

 fluid is formed, contained, and circulated, we see a con- 

 geries of conditions ideally adapted for the growth, 

 preservation, and dissemination of such a specific microbic 

 poison, and where it is at liberty to attack directly and 

 at first hand the meningeal coverings of the brain, cord, 

 and nerves, with their enclosed nervine contents, and to 

 give rise to the very various pathological changes follow- 

 ing the invasion of this region, whence, passing from 

 this region along the nerve trunks and fibres, it readily 



