142 THE MORE CHRONIC INFECTIOUS DISEASES 



maintains that it is a cure-all, but merely another means of 

 treating this serious disease. This is in reality an active 

 immunization during the course of the disease, but it has not 

 been found possible to inject a healthy person in the same 

 manner and thereby increase his resistance to tuberculosis 



TREPONEMA PALLIDUM. 



Syphilis is one of the venereal diseases. It is chiefly 

 acquired by cohabitation, but may also be contracted by 

 nurses and physicians in their professional relations with 

 patients. It is a chronic infectious disease characterized by 

 three stages, the first a primary, acute, active, self-limited 

 ulceration, with some regional lymph-gland swellings; 

 second, a period in which various eruptions appear on the 

 skin and mucous membranes (mucous patches) with slowly 

 progressive changes in some of the internal organs, and third, 

 a last stage of soft tumor formation (gumma), with fibrous 

 affections of the organs and degenerations of the nervous 

 system. 



It is caused by a spiral organism called the Spirocheta 

 pallida or Treponema pallidum. This microbe enters small 

 cracks or wounds, penetrates to the deeper layers, invades 

 the lymph channels, and produces the primary sore, the 

 hard chancre. Even before this is fully developed, the spiro- 

 chetse have journeyed to the neighboring lymph glands, 

 where an enlargement results. They then invade both the 

 lymph routes and the blood and rapidly infest all bodily 

 tissues. They stimulate the small round cells of blood and 

 tissue to multiply even up to fibrous tissue formation, and 

 they cause degeneration of the functionating structures. 

 Just how they make the gumma is only conjectured. All 

 their effects, however, are probably due to the toxins set 

 free upon their death and disintegration. The spirochetse 

 remain in the body as long as the patient lives, if untreated. 

 They leave the patient probably only with the moisture of 



