her of a
syphilitic child that she herself has the disease and should be treated
for it, or she will have other syphilitic children. Just why the mother
may never have shown an outward sign of syphilis and yet have the
disease and bear syphilitic children is a question we cannot entirely
answer, any more than we can explain why all obvious signs of syphilis
are absent in some patients even without treatment, while others have
one outbreak after another, and are never without evidence of their
infection, unless it is suppressed by treatment. Probably at least a
part of the explanation lies in the fact, already mentioned, that
syphilis is a milder disease in women than in men, and has more
opportunities for concealing its identity.

+Healthy Children of Syphilitic Mothers.+--If the mother of a syphilitic
child has the disease, is it equally true that a syphilitic mother can
never bear a healthy child? It certainly is not, especially in the late
years of the disease, after it has spent much of its force. When the
multitudes of germs present in the secondary period have died out,
whether as a result of treatment or in the normal course of the disease,
a woman who still has syphilis latent in her or even in active tertiary
form, may bear a healthy child. Such a child may be perfectly healthy in
every particular, and not only not have syphilis, but show no sign that
the mother had the disease. It is in the period of active syphilis, the
three, four, or five years following her infection, that the syphilitic
mother is most likely to bear syphilitic children.

+Non-hereditary Syphilis in Children.+--Syphilis in children is not
always hereditary, even though the signs of it appear only a short time
after birth. A woman who at the beginning of her pregnancy was free from
the disease, may acquire it while she is still carrying the child as a
result of her husband's becoming infected from some outside source. The
limitation which pregnancy may put on sexual indulgence leads some men
to seek sexual gratification elsewhere than with their wives. The
husband becoming infected, then infects his pregnant wife. There are no
absolute rules about the matter, but if the mother is not infected until
the seventh month of her pregnancy, the child is likely to escape the
hereditary form of the disease. On the other hand, imagine the prospects
for infection when the child is born through a birth-canal filled with
mucous patches or with a chancr