SYPHILIS. 319 



viduals, can not be determined with certainty, so long as 

 the exciting agent of syphilis is not known. The efforts to 

 check florid syphilis by means of the serum of individuals 

 who have recovered from syphilis, or of animals into whom 

 syphilitic products have been injected, have each and all 

 failed ; and for the present, at least, they are without any 

 experimental justification. 



Heredity of Syphilis. Children of syphilitic parents 

 are frequently syphilitic at birth, or present sooner or later 

 evidences of hereditary syphilis. 



The mode of transmitting the disease may, under such 

 conditions, be as follows : 



i. Through congenital transmission from the father that 

 is, transmission of the disease by means of the spermato- 

 zoids {paternal infection}. According to the opinion of 

 most observers, this mode of transmission is actually 

 operative, the spermatozoid of the syphilitic father carrying 

 the disease-germ into the earliest indication of the fetus. 

 This view, however, has not been proved. Experimental 

 attempts to induce syphilis in healthy individuals by 

 inoculation of the seminal fluid of syphilitic men have 

 been made, but without inducing syphilis in the persons 

 experimented on. The assumption of a direct paternal in- 

 fection is thus based solely upon the clinical experience 

 that syphilitic men may procreate syphilitic children with- 

 out infection of the mother. The majority of clinicians 

 accept this as a fact. According to some, the disease of 

 the fetus is always to be ascribed to the father, and should 

 the mother suffer at all, she is believed to have first acquired 

 the infecting material from the child infected by the father 

 (retroinfection, choc en retour). It has already been men- 

 tioned that the validity of this proposition has been attacked 

 from various sides. Distinguished syphilographers are of 

 the opinion that no child is syphilitic in the absence of 

 syphilis in the mother (A. Wolff) ; that healthy women who 

 give birth to syphilitic children, and are thus immune, are 

 only apparently healthy, but in reality are infected ; that 

 often, even though primary or secondary manifestations are 

 not observed, they later suffer from tertiary manifestations. 

 If this be true that is, if in a given case the mother of a 

 syphilitic child is herself syphilitic then the illustration 

 can not be employed in support of paternal infection ; the 

 disease of the child may then arise also through the mother. 



