J4 Human Physiology. 



die under one year old, and 25 per cent, of those who die 

 under five years old, are the victims of this disease ; that one- 

 half the out patients of St. Bartholomew's Hospital 3,000 

 a-year are so affected; that in 1864, of 68,000 patients- 

 admitted to the hospitals of London, 20,600 were affected with 

 diseases which had their origin in syphilis; that 56,000 of the 

 poorer classes of London were every year the victims of " con- 

 tagious diseases." 



In an official Blue Book of the House of Lords (1868-9), fa- 

 is stated that a considerable portion of the soldiers in the army 

 and sailors in the navy are constantly in the hospitals, and that 

 the greater number become poisoned for life, so that they must 

 communicate the taint of the disease to their posterity ; that 

 multitudes of virtuous married women are infected by their 

 husbands, and give the disease to their children the most of 

 whom perish miserably, being still-born, dying in infancy, or 

 growing up with scrofulous diseases ; that it would be very 

 difficult to overstate the amount of damage that syphilis does 

 to the population ; that it produces blindness, deafness, and a 

 peculiar decay of -the teeth ; that diseased children infect their 

 nurses ; that by causing the early death of children, it seriously 

 diminishes population ; that one surgeon, Mr. James Paget,. 

 F.R.S., had known five surgeons die, and fifty others severely 

 suffer, poisoned by accidental scratches in operations on 

 syphilitic patients ; that surgeons are infected and sometimes 

 die of contagious diseases taken while attending women in 

 childbirth; that it causes diseases of the lungs, liver, spleen, 

 brain, and spinal marrow, producing a constantly increasing 

 mortality ; that, according to the testimony of Sir W. Jenner, 

 a large portion of the children, in and out patients of the 

 London hospitals, suffer from constitutional syphilis, though 

 registered as dying of bronchitis, inflammation of the bowels, 

 cholera infantum, &c. ; that in thirteen years one-fourth of the 

 patients in St. George's Hospital were suffering from complaints- 



