PHILLIP'S PHOSPHO-MURIATE of QUININE TONIC AND RECONSTRUCTIVE With Marked Beneficial Effect Upon the Nervous System THE CHAS. H. PHILLIPS CHEMICAL CO. NEW YORK AND LONDON THE SOUTHERN PRACTITIONER AN INDEPENDENT MONTHLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO MEDICINE AND SURGERY SUBSCRIPTION PRICE, ONE DOLLAR PER YEAR THE SOCIAL CANKERS.* BY OTEY J. PORTER, M.D., OF COLUMBIA, TENN. In the warfare between science and ignorance it is necessary for science to expose some of her soldiers to the extra hazard of the skirmish line. The physician who ventures to publicly discuss the relation of venereal disease to social welfare must forego the hope of popular approval and become an adept at dodging verbal brickbats. He must take chances as to whether he *Annual address of the President of the Middle Tennessee Medical Association, delivered at Murfreesboro, Tenn., November 19, 1914. will be esteemed a Paul Revere risking his neck to warn the people or an Arnold meriting professional death. Certain it is he is on the skirmish line, a shining target for the slings and arrows of outraged prudery. Whether a given achievement is held in after time to have been traitorous or heroic depends usually on which side won. Had the war of independence failed Washington's memory would now probably be execrated rather than venerated. In the contest today being waged between science and the social evil the latter has, because of its alliance with popular prejudices, thus far signally won. Did I not hope for the final triumph of knowledge over ignorance I would not now be so foolhardy as to invite the odium incident to discussing this tabooed theme. In my judgment, science is today playing against popular ignorance, for the heaviest stakes possible - namely, the health and happiness of a nation. If science wins, the last and the greatest of the disease afflictions of humanity will have been overcome. If ignorance wins, it will do what ignorance triumphant has ever done-crucify the truth and continue to doom countless human lives to living deaths. Is the game not worth the candle? The two venereal diseases that concern public health are gonorrhoea and syphilis. They are due to germs that are as well known to physicians as dog fennel and Johnson grass are known to farmers. Both infect the entire body. Gonorrhoea, however, attacks chiefly the reproductive organs, leaving in its wake a host of chronic, incurable conditions, not the least of which is sterility. Syphilis plays no favorites with the organs and tissues of the body. It paints the skin every hue of the rainbow; it enters the mouth and leaves it a charnel house; it bestrides the face and makes a saddle of the nose; it leaps on the scalp and snatching here and there brings sad wreckage to woman's crowning glory; it touches the sparkling eye of youth and leaves a stupid stare in lieu; it plays with the mechanism of the brain and turns a brilliant man into |