nd woman may
well devote a share of personal energy and influence.

The manner of giving salvarsan is as important for the patient as the
correct performance of an operation, and the safeguards which surround
it are essentially the same. The drug is an extremely powerful one, more
powerful than any other known, and in the usual doses it carries with it
into the body for the destruction of the germs of syphilis many times
the amount of arsenic needed to kill a human being. If something should
go astray, the patient might lose his life as promptly as if the surgeon
or the anesthetist should make a slip during an operation. To make the
giving of salvarsan safe, the judgment, experience, and training of the
specialist are not too much to ask.

The dangers of salvarsan are easily exaggerated, and some people have a
foolish fear of it. The wonderful thing about the drug is that, with all
the possibility for harm that one might expect in it, it so seldom makes
any trouble. It is, of course, first carefully tested on animals when it
is manufactured, so that no poisonous product is placed on the market.
It is as safe to take salvarsan at the hands of an expert as it is to
take ether for an operation or to take antitoxin for diphtheria, and
that is saying a good deal. Most of the stories of accidents that go the
rounds among laymen date back to the days when first doses were too
large and made the patients rather sick for a time. Present methods and
cautions about administering the drug are such that, except for the
improvement in their condition, patients seldom know they have received
it. The first dose may light the eruption up a little, but this is only
because the drug stirs the germs up before it kills them, and
improvement begins promptly within a few hours or a day or two.

The first characteristic of salvarsan which we should bear in mind
especially, in our interest in the social aspects of syphilis, is then
the rapidity rather than the thoroughness of its action. It is a social
asset to us because it protects us from the infected person, and it is
an asset to the patient because it will set him on his feet, able to
work and go about his business, in a fraction of the time that mercury
can do it.

The efficiency of salvarsan in the cure of syphilis in the early stages
is due, first, to the large amount of it that can be introduced into the
body without killing the patient, and second, to the promptness with
which it