hat surround the
bringing of a child into the world. A vast experience underlies what
might be called the time-treatment principle on which permission to
marry after syphilis should be based. It has recently been ably
summarized again, and with commendable conservatism, by Hoffmann in the
rule that a syphilitic who has been efficiently treated by modern
standards, with mercury and salvarsan, over a period of two to three
years, and who has remained free from all symptoms and signs of the
disease for two years after all treatment was stopped, including
negative blood and spinal fluid tests, may marry in from four to five
years from the beginning of his infection. Variations of this rule must
be allowed only with great conservatism, since salvarsan, on whose
efficiency many pleas for a shortening of probation have been based, is
still too recent an addition to our implements of warfare to justify a
rash dependence upon it. The abortive cure in relation to marriage is a
problem in itself, and the shortening of time allowed in such cases must
be individually determined by an expert who has had the case in charge
from the beginning, and not, at least as yet, by the average doctor.
Such a standard as this for the marriage of persons who have had
syphilis steers essentially a middle course between those who condemn
syphilitics to an unreasonable and needless deprivation of all the joys
of family life, and those who are too ready to take our conquest of
syphilis for granted and to cast to the winds centuries of experience
with the treachery of the disease.

Even while we concede the value of generations of experience with
syphilis in determining the probable risk of infection, it is a duty to
investigate thoroughly by the modern methods, such as the Wassermann
blood test, the condition of all members of a family in which syphilis
has appeared. This means, for example, that even though the husband with
syphilis may have married years after the usual period of infectiousness
has passed, his wife, though outwardly healthy, should have a Wassermann
test, and his children would be none the worse for an examination, even
though they seem normal. Syphilis is an insidious disease, a consummate
master of deceit, able to strike from what seems a clear sky. The latest
means for its recognition have already revolutionized some of our
conceptions of its dangers and its transmission. It is only common
prudence to take advantage of them in ev