784: CHRONIC INFECTIOUS DISEASES. 



iodine must be resumed after the catarrh or eruption has subsided 

 The diet should not be reduced ; not on account of the remedy, how- 

 ever, but because of the condition of the patient's general health. On 

 the contrary, his food should be nourishing, and he should be allowed 

 a little wine or beer. For persons of broken-down constitution I not 

 tmfrequently prescribe iron, quinine, and cod-liver oil, besides the iodine. 



The local treatment of the secondary and tertiary symptoms should 

 be restricted to the extirpation of old condylomata (which, though they 

 always dry up under mercurial treatment, do not always disappear en- 

 tirely), to the application of atropine in iritis, to local blood-letting, 

 and to occasional surgical procedures, which may be demanded on ac- 

 count of destructive inflammation of the skin, caries, or necrosis. The 

 majority of the secondary and tertiary affections do not require local 

 treatment. 



Syphilization, which, during the last ten years has been much 

 lauded as a certain means of eradicating syphilis, and of protecting 

 the system against further infection, has again fallen into disrepute, 

 or at all events is now merely practised by its introducers, and by the 

 enthusiastic disciples of their new doctrines. The process of syphiliza- 

 tion consists in the production of chancre pustules upon the skin of a 

 person afflicted with constitutional syphilis, which process is continu- 

 ally to be repeated, until the inoculation ceases to act. Apart from 

 the fact that some persons do not become proof against the chancre- 

 virus, after suffering several hundred and even as many as two thou- 

 sand inoculations, it has not by any means always followed that, the 

 immunity once attained, the syphilitic affection has healed ; and, where 

 recovery has taken place, it remains more than doubtful whether it has 

 been in consequence of the syphilization. 



CHAPTER II. 



CONGENITAL AND HEREDITARY SYPHILIS,, 



ETIOLOGY. We shall pay no attention to the forms of infantile 

 syphilis, arising from the infection of a child during birth by syphilitic 

 ulcers upon the genitals of its mother, or upon the nipples, lips, or 

 other parts of the body, of its nurse, for these forms of syphilis do nol 

 differ, either hi point of origin, or of course, from the syphilis of adults. 



By the term congenital hereditary syphilis, of which alone we now 

 propose to treat, we mean a form of that malady occurring in newly- 

 born children, and originating in the embryo, from constitutional dis- 

 ease existing in the father at the time of begetting the child, or in the 



