.+--How serious is the risk of
infecting the wife if a man should marry during the contagious period of
syphilis? This will depend a good deal on the frequency of relapses
after the active secondary stage. On this point Sperk estimated that in
1518 patients, only ten escaped relapses entirely. These were, however,
not patients that had been specially well treated. Keyes, quoted by
Pusey, estimated, on the basis of his private records, that the chances
taken by a syphilitic husband who used no special precautions to prevent
infecting his wife were twelve to one the first year in favor of
infection, five to two the second year, and one to four the third year,
being negligible after the fourth year.

+Syphilis in the Father.+--Even while we recognize the infection of
women and children as the greatest risk in marriage we should not lose
sight of the cost to society which syphilis in the father of the family
himself may entail. For such a man to be stricken by some of the serious
accidents of late syphilis throws his family as well as himself upon
society. A syphilitic infection which has not been cured not only makes
a man a poor risk to an insurance company, but a poor risk to the family
which has to look to him for support and for his share and influence in
the bringing up of the children. A sufficient number of men and women in
the thirties and forties are crippled, made dependent, or lost to the
world entirely, to make the responsibilities of the family when assumed
by persons with untreated or poorly treated syphilis a matter of some
concern, whether or not they are still able to transmit the disease to
others.

+The Time-treatment Principle and the Five-year Rule.+--In setting a
modern standard for the fitness of syphilitics for marriage it may be
said at the outset that there is little justification for making the
mere fact of a previous syphilitic infection a permanent bar in the
majority of cases. The risk of economic disaster to the parent and
wage-earner, and the risk of transmission of the disease to the partner
and the children, are both controllable by a combination of efficient
treatment and time. The man who has conformed to the best practice in
both particulars may usually marry and have healthy children. The woman
under the same circumstances need not fear that the risk of having
offspring injured by her disease is any greater than the risk that they
will be injured by any other of the unforeseen risks t