56 SPIROCH^TES 



follows: A little serum from the suspected person is mixed with 

 an extract of liver and some guinea-pig serum, and added to a 

 solution of blood corpuscles from a sheep or ox. If the person 

 from whom the serum was drawn is syphilitic, 

 the blood corpuscles are dissolved by this 

 mixture and the red color is lost, whereas 

 if the serum is not syphilitic no change in 

 F O& ^ ne blood corpuscles takes place, and the 

 red color is retained. The greater the num- 

 ber of spirochsetes in the body the more 

 FIG. 9^ Wassermann obvious is the discoloration produced. As 

 Reaction. Neg., nega- stated before there are possible sources of 



live; Pos., positive. errQr ^ ^ ^ but ^ properly made with 



standard reagents, and with sufficient control tests, it can be con- 

 fidently relied upon. 



Treatment. There are many quack doctors who are still 

 practicing the same inefficient methods of curing syphilis that were 

 in vogue several centuries ago. Syphilitic sores are powdered 

 and cauterized and cured, and the patient is given to believe 

 that his disease is cured. Unfortunately, as we have seen, the 

 course of the disease is of such a nature that the doctor's claim of 

 having cured may be borne out for months or years before the 

 insidious disease appears again, this time in a much more de- 

 structive and perhaps incurable state. Superficial treatment of 

 syphilis sores, accompanied perhaps by a few " tonic " pills, in 

 no way destroys the virulence of the parasites or alters the future 

 course of the disease. It merely makes the chance of correctly 

 diagnosing the disease more difficult, and it frequently results in an 

 unsuspecting victim carrying the disease untreated to a stage 

 where it has wrought irreparable damage to himself, his life-mate 

 and his children. 



Treatment of the disease formerly consisted in the adminis- 

 tration of mercuric chloride. While this sometimes effected an 

 apparently complete cure, over 80 per cent of syphilitics suffered 

 relapses in spite of the most persistent treatment. In 1910 

 Ehrlich, after years of experimentation, offered humanity his 

 famous preparation, " No. 606," known as salvarsan, an arsenic 

 compound which is deadly to spirochsetes. When this drug is 

 injected into the veins of a syphilitic, it almost immediately 

 kills all the spirochaetes except a few which have stowed away in 



