it is just as well to
provide for them. Crowding, close quarters, and insufficient sanitary
conveniences in stores and offices, in restaurants or tenements, provide
just the conditions in which accidental infection may occur. A gang of
men with a common bucket and drinking cup may be at the mercy of
syphilis if one member is in a contagious condition. A syphilitic might
cough into the air with little risk, since the germs would die before
they could find a favorable place to infect. But a syphilitic who coughs
directly into one's face with a mouth full of spirochetes multiplies the
risk considerably. The public towel is certainly dangerous--almost as
much so as the common drinking cup. The possibility of syphilitic
infection by cutting the knuckle of the hand against the teeth of an
opponent in striking a blow upon his mouth should not be overlooked, and
the occurrence is common enough for this type of chancre to have
received the special name of brawl, or fist, chancre.

+Accidental Syphilis in Physicians and Nurses.+--Another type of
infection ought not to go unmentioned--that to which physicians and
nurses are exposed in operating on or handling patients with active
syphilis. Before the day of rubber gloves such things were much more
common perhaps than they are now, yet they are common enough at the
present time. Most of the risk occurs in exploring or working in
cavities of the body containing infected discharges. The blood may
become infected in passing over active sores. The risk from all these
sources is so considerable that it is justifiable as a measure of
protection to a hospital staff to take a blood test on every patient who
applies for treatment in a hospital, to say nothing of the advantage
which this would be to the patient.

+Transmission by Intimate Contacts--Kissing.+--As we pass from the less
to the more intimate means of contact between the syphilitic person and
others, the risk of transmitting syphilis may be said to increase
enormously. The fundamental conditions of moisture, a susceptible
surface, protection of the germ from drying and from air, and possibly
also massage or rubbing, are here better satisfied than in the risks
thus far considered. Kissing, caresses, and sexual relations make up the
origin of an overwhelming proportion of syphilitic infection. Infections
are, of course, traceable to the nursing of syphilitic infants. It is
through these sources of contact that syphilis invades th