84 THE INTERNAL SECRETIONS 1920 



sermann states that this first period may be short; 

 shorter than was believed in the time when the sec- 

 ondary syphilitic symptoms were considered as the first 

 symptoms of a general infection. 



During the last year a new reaction has been largely 

 discussed, especially in German and Swiss literature 

 the reaction of Sachs-Georgi. I cannot take space to 

 give any details here about this reaction. The general 

 opinion is that in most cases this reaction parallels the 

 Wasserman test. It may, however, be observed in the 

 serum some time before the Wassermann test is posi- 

 tive, and would thus be a still earlier symptom of a 

 generalization of the luetic infection. The short pre- 

 Wassermann period is thus still too long, and the period 

 in which abortive treatment is effective still shorter 

 than Wassermann believed. The reaction of Sachs- 

 Georgi has not been used in my experiments, as it was 

 not invented at the time I was doing this work. 



The first question we have to ask is: How long is 

 this pre- Wassermann period? The literature on this 

 subject is enormous. 



Boas (32), gives this table: 



No. of weeks after infection Total cases 



4 8 



5 4 



6 3 



7 5 



8 10 



9 5 



12 1 



Bruck and Stern (39), state that in rare cases the 

 Wassermann test may be positive before the primary 

 induration is observed. In the already quoted report of 

 the Special Committee upon the standardization of 

 pathological methods (34), I found one case where ten 

 days after infection the Wassermann test was found 

 positive by three different workers. Craig (40), ob- 



