COURSE OF SYPHILIS 53 



certain tissues or organs. The gummy sores or " gummas " 

 which often break out during the third stage of the disease have 

 usually been considered non-infective, and spirochaetes could not 

 be found in them. Recently, however, the parasites have been 

 found in some of these lesions, also. In congenital syphilis 

 the parasites often multiply in enormous numbers in the unborn 

 child, penetrating practically every organ and tissue of the body. 

 The liver especially is often found literally teeming with spiro- 

 chaetes (Fig. 8). 



The Disease, — Syphilis is a disease which has no equal in its 

 deceptive nature. It is largely due to this fact that so many 

 tragedies result from its ravages. Its effects on the individual 

 are often horrible enough, leading to disease of almost any tissue 

 or organ in the body, but it is only when judged in the light of 

 the additional damage that is done to the innocent wife or 

 husband, as the case may be, and to the next generation, that 

 the true meaning of syphilis can be measured. Syphilis may 

 remain latent and unsuspected for twenty years or more, and the 

 carrier still be infective. Meanwhile, perhaps in ignorance of 

 his condition, he may infect a hitherto sound person whom he 

 has taken for a life companion, and cause her, or him, to be 

 ravaged and slowly destroj^ed by this horrible disease. Worse 

 than this his chances of having healthy children are small. It 

 has been shown that about 45 per cent of those who later become 

 victims of general paralysis from syphilis never can have any 

 children, either on account of sterility or of repeated abortions. 

 The author of the statement in the Bible that " the sins of the 

 fathers shall be visited upon the heads of the children unto 

 the third and fourth generations " may well have had in mind 

 the hereditary effects of venereal diseases, but he might have 

 stated further that often there is no third or fourth generation. 

 The only pity of it is that this is not always the case, for those 

 who are brought into the world are in the majority of cases 

 hopelessly handicapped either mentally or physically. Feeble- 

 mindedness is five times as common in syphilitic families as in 

 normal ones. There is some reason for beheving that the hideous 

 mentally deficient children known as mongols are the result of 

 syphilis in parents. And finally, as if all this were not enough, 

 the carrier of latent syphilis may later develop general paralysis, 

 or some other disease of the nervous system or other organs, which 



