a simpering idiot. In short, when its work is well done, there is indeed little left but "a rag and a bone and a hank of hair."

The gravity of any disease in its relation to public health depends upon its degree of prevalence, the facility of its transmission, its morbidity and mortality and the possibility of its prevention and cure.

I will not weary you with statistical details bearing on the prevalence at the present time of venereal disease. The few figures given are the most conservative to be found. I know that these diseases are more prevalent than my figures indicate; but as no cause is helped by exaggeration we will not run the risk of over-statement.

You may take it as certain that 90 per cent of prostitutes are infected with, and capable all the time of transmitting either one or both of the venereal diseases; that 60 per cent of men have or have had venereal disease; that 20 per cent of married women become infected after marriage; that a large number of children acquire these disease by contact with their elders and by inheritance.

With regard to the transmissility of these diseases, all that society needs to know now is that they are highly infectious, and are often acquired as innocently as measles.

That syphilis happens to be classed as a venereal disease is merely an accident of its law of transmission, for the germ will take hold and flourish quite as viciously on the rosy lips of the purest girls or on a physician's finger as elsewhere.

If the virus of syphilis is lodged anywhere on the human body where the scarf skin is broken, systemic infection follows. It may be, and indeed frequently is, acquired by kissing. In a Pennsylvania town inhabited chiefly by Hungarian miners, an annual Christmas carnival occurs during which the usual social restraints are, for an evening dance, suspended. Last Christmas, during the progress of this dance, interludes were a feature, during which any man was at liberty to catch and kiss every girl he could.

One

male dancer, whose mouth and lips were loaded with virus, conveyed syphilis to the lips of nine healthy girls.

Every physician of experience has seen more or less of these peculiarly tragic cases of acquired infection.

Syphilis is the mocking bird of diseases. It can scarcely be said to have a note all its own, but screeches out its tragic story in every pathologic key, now simulating one malady, now another.

But this mimic of all diseases has at last been run to ground by the genius of Wassermann and Noguchi, so that today locomotor-ataxia, general paresis and numerous other heretofore lost snatches from the opera syphilitica tragica have been recovered and their score and libretto completed. In regard to the effects of venereal diseases on the individual I confess to a state of perennial astonishment at the unbelieving attitude of the public touching their seriousness. That they are two of the most deadly and widespread scourges that afflict mankind is beyond question. Over half the women who go on the operating table for abdominal dissection are put there by gonorrhoea. For every one brought to operation there are many chronic invalids, made such from the same disease. These spend their painful, weary lives wondering why Providence has so afflicted them. One-fourth of all blind children suffer the loss of sight as a consequence of eye infection by venereal virus at their birth.

When not less than 60 per cent of all men acquire venereal disease during youth and early manhood, when it is known by all competent physicians that a large per cent of these men remain capable for years of transmitting infection, when so large a number of married women bear evidence of past or present infection, when almost every town. and hamlet has a family exhibit of its ravages, does it not seem surprising that society so long delays taking up adequate defensive measures?

We will now consider the effects of venereal diseases on society. In the last analysis this phase of the question con

cerning itself with the family and the individual. Now, venereal disease bears about the same relation to the family and the social organization founded thereon as a worm bears to an apple. Like a canker it eats at the very core of successful marriage. Of the marriages prevented (and alas! but one is prevented where ten should be), of the innumerable instances of anguish for the present, apprehension for the future and remorse for the past that have their cause in the havoc of venereal disease on the lives, happiness, and health of parent and offspring, no tongue can tell, no pen describe. To the extent that it tends to thwart the purpose of marriage, to destroy or cripple the family, to that extent does it sap the state.

The motive of patriotism alone should urge an active warfare on this powerful enemy of society.

Disease manifestations, whose causes until lately have been unknown, have recently been proven to be due to the germ of syphilis introduced into the body twenty, thirty, or even fifty or more years ago. Every now and then physicians are called to treat some obscure brain disease in a person whose life for years has been on a plane apparently above the possibility of venereal infection. The blood tests and treatment frequently prove the cause to have been syphilis.

For a long period the profession has believed that the germ of this disease was transmissible from parent to offspring no further than one generation. Recent studies show that it is highly probable that the germs may be passed on to the third generation. A paper by H. F. Stoll, in the journal of the American Medical Association, in the October 31, 1914, issue, is instructive along this line. From thirty-two families whose parents, one or both were known to have had acquired syphilis, sixty-eight children were tested for evidence of hereditary infection. Forty gave positive reactions. Six grandchildren were tested with three positive reactions.

A person whose primary infection was so trivial as to pass unnoticed or be forgotten, enjoys good health for many years, when without apparent cause he becomes epileptic or begins to have grandiose ideals, or finds his ability to walk impaired, or suffers lightning-like pains throughout his body. What has happened to so deeply disturb the smooth current of his life? This! The treacherous germ of syphilis, ignorantly admitted to his body years and years ago, has begun to stir. With a countless host of his progeny he assaults the storehouse of our nerve energy and lets it run riot in epileptic convulsions. Or stealing along

"The myriad chambers of the brain

Where thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain;
He cleaves the links and lo! What wreckage flows.
Where once was mind, an insane furnace glows."

Or, perchance he opens an attack on the substations of the brain that preside over our half-conscious acts, such as walking, talking, etc. We begin to take note that our feet are behaving curiously. The enemy has garrisoned his pallid army in the little gray villages scattered up and down the spinal cord highway that connects our brain and body. We start an order to our feet to move forward, but our lines of communication are in the hands of the enemy, the order is garbled, the leg misunderstands and sidesteps. Or the enemy trains his artillery on the citadel of the body, the stomach, and this brave stronghold collapses in quivering agony; fiery darts leave their burning trail in every limb; where health and peace so lately reigned in this republic of our body, anarchy is let loose; the sewers of the system become choked and we become the veritable graveyard of our former selves.

If the individual alone paid the price of his misadventures, it would be hard though just. But natural law is inexorable and cruel and visits the infection of the father upon the children even unto the third and to the fourth generation.

I firmly believe that the profession has merely glimpsed the far-reaching effects of hereditary syphilis. Many obscure disease manifestations, the cause of which are now unknown, will be found to be due to disturbances, the consequence of hereditary syphilis.

We have discussed the nature and effects of venereal diseases. What are we as a people doing to check their spread? Nothing! May be worse than nothing!

Two principal methods of attacking them have from time to time been urged and tried. The one is moral culture, the other legal force.

Moral culture finds the larger number of supporters. It is based on the dogma of divine retribution for sexual sin and sees in suffering a just punishment. It contents itself with pointing out the penalties here and hereafter. It concerns itself with the customs and morals of humanity and is forever calling attention to the dance, the dress, the manners and the speech of society as a factor in the spread of venereal disease. It seeks to suppress venereal disease by suppressing the manifestations of sex. This plan is indictable on two counts. First, it ignores what is self-evident on every hand, that moral restraint operates ineffectually in the presence of passion and opportunity. Secondly, if it ever had any merit in more God-fearing periods of our past history, it certainly is a failure now.

Legal force in one form or another has been, and is now in some States being, tried out. Segregation of prostitutes with medical and police surveillance has been the favorite mode of invoking the aid of law. This plan has been thoroughly tried in a number of European countries and in Cincinnati in our own country. It has completely failed, as so unscientific and so senseless a plan deserved to fail. Suppose that plague and cholera lasted its victims for years. What sense would there be in trying to limit their spread by segregating some of the infected to one quarter of town and allowing the other three or four-quarters to