Nobody knows how much syphilis is cured, partly
because nobody knows how much syphilis there really is, and partly
because it is almost an axiom that few, except persons of high
intelligence and sufficient means, stick to treatment until they can be
discharged as cured. Take into consideration, too, the fact that the
older methods of treating syphilis were scarcely equal to the task of
curing the disease, and it is easy to see why the idea has arisen, even
among physicians, that once a syphilitic means always a syphilitic, and
that the disease is incurable.

+Radical or Complete Cure.+--In speaking of the cure of syphilis, it is
worth while to define the terms we use rather clearly. It is worth while
to speak in connection with this disease of radical as distinguished
from symptomatic cure. In a radical cure we clear up the patient so
completely that he never suffers a relapse. In symptomatic cure, which
is not really cure at all, we simply clear up the symptoms for which he
seeks medical advice, without thought for what he may develop next.
Theoretically, the radical cure of syphilis should mean ridding the body
of every single germ of the disease. Practically speaking, we have no
means of telling with certainty when this has been done, or as yet,
whether it ever can be done. It may well be that further study of the
disease will show that, especially in fully developed cases, we simply
reduce the infection to harmlessness, or suppress it, without
eradicating the last few germs. Recent work by Warthin tends to
substantiate this idea. So we are compelled in practice to limit our
conception of radical cure to the condition in which we have not only
gotten rid of every single symptom of active syphilis in the patient,
but have carried the treatment to the point where, so far as we can
detect in life, he never develops any further evidence of the disease.
He lives out his normal span of years in the normal way, and without
having his efficiency as a human being affected by it. In interpreting
this ideal for a given case we should not forget that radical methods of
treating syphilis are new. Only time can pass full verdict upon them.
Yet the efficiency of older methods was sufficient to control the
disease in a considerable percentage of those affected. There is,
therefore, every reason to believe that radical cure under the newer
methods is a practical and attainable ideal in an even higher percentage
of cases and offers al