PHYSICAL DETERIORATION, 53 



mission by the parent, and the children born after this 

 period, though themselves diseased, are incapable of 

 infecting those who tend them. We have every 

 reason to believe, therefore, that there are no specific 

 germs or microbes left in the body of the parent, and 

 that we have to do solely with the more or less per- 

 manent change in the reproductive cells, produced by 

 the microbes during their residence in the body of the 

 parent. The children born during this period are 

 frequently ill-nourished, possess recognisable indica- 

 tions of disease, and are subject to nervous and other 

 affections. 



We have here, therefore, for the first time, distinct 

 evidence that an obviously acquired constitutional 

 disease is transmitted, and that that transmission is 

 in some cases due to a direct effect of the action of 

 the microbe upon the germinal cells. The microbe of 

 syphilis, unlike the microbe of leprosy, but like that 

 of measles, feeds on healthy blood and tissue. It 

 attacks the strong as well as the weak, and, if the 

 weak more readily succumb, yet the strong and 

 vigorous are more apt to acquire it. It is not, there- 

 fore, selective, like leprosy, and this fact, added to 

 that of its capacity of transmission, ranks it as a 

 disease distinctly inimical to race progress. 



