hrough all the years of her active infection, and
finally, in her first pregnancy, give birth to a healthy child, even
though she still has the disease in latent form herself. Still another
may have a miscarriage or two and then bear one or two healthy children,
only to have the last child, years after her infection, be stillborn
and syphilitic. The series of abortions, followed by stillborn or
syphilitic children, and finally by healthy ones, is only the general
and by no means the invariable rule.

+Treatment of the Mother.+--For the mother, then, syphilis may mean all
the disappointments of a thwarted and defeated maternity, and the
horrors of bearing diseased and malformed children. She is herself
subject to the risk of death from blood poisoning which may follow
abortion. But here, as in all syphilis, early recognition and thorough
treatment of the disease may totally transform the situation. In the old
days of giving mercury by mouth and without salvarsan, there was little
hope of doing anything for the children during the active infectious
period in the mother. Now we are realizing that even while the child is
in the womb the vigorous treatment of the mother may save the day for
it, and bring it into the world with a fair chance for useful and
efficient life. More especially is this true when the mother has been
infected while carrying the child, or just before or as conception
occurred. In these cases, salvarsan and mercury, carefully given, seem
not only not harmful to mother and child, but may entirely prevent the
child's getting the disease. For this reason every maternity hospital or
ward should be in a position to make good Wassermann blood tests,
conduct expert examinations, and give thorough treatment to women who
are found to have syphilis. There does not seem to be any good reason
why a Wassermann test should not be made part of the examination which
every intelligent mother expects a physician to make at the beginning
of her pregnancy. Such a test would bring to light some otherwise
undiscovered syphilis, and protect the lives of numbers of mothers and
children whose health and happiness, not to say life, are now sacrificed
to blind ignorance.

+Effect of Hereditary Syphilis on the Unborn Child.+--In the effect of
hereditary syphilis on the child, we see the most direct illustration of
the deteriorating influence of the disease on the race. Here again we
must allow for wide variation, dependent on cir