iciently so to make the odds overwhelmingly
against even the knowing ones who hope to indulge and yet escape. The
acquiring of syphilis from loose men or women is usually thought of as
entirely an affair of genital contacts. Yet it is notable that
extra-genital chancres are the not uncommon result of liberties taken
with light women which do not go to the extent of sexual relation. Women
who accept intimacies of men who, while unwilling to commit an outright
breach of decency, will take liberties with a woman who will accept them
have only themselves to blame if it suddenly develops that the infection
has been transmitted from one to the other by kisses or other supposedly
mild offenses against the proprieties.

+Syphilis Among Prostitutes.+--As to the prevalence of syphilis among
both public and clandestine or secret prostitutes, several notable
surveys of more or less typical conditions have been made. With the aid
of the Wassermann test much heretofore undiscovered syphilis has been
revealed. Eighty to 85 per cent of prostitutes at some time in their
careers acquire the disease.[13] About half this number are likely to
have active evidence of the disease. Thirty per cent of the prostitutes
investigated by Papee in Lemberg were in the most dangerous period--the
first to the third year of the disease. Three-fourths of these dangerous
cases were in women under twenty-five years of age--in the most
attractive period of their lives. Averaging a number of large European
cities, it was found that not more than 40 per cent of prostitutes were
even free of the outward signs of syphilis, to say nothing of what
laboratory tests might have revealed. It is more than evident that
prostitution is admirably fitted to play the leading role in the
dissemination of this disease. The young and attractive prostitute,
whether in a house of ill-fame, on the street, or in the more secret and
private highways and by-ways of illicit sexual life, is the one who
attracts the largest number with the most certain prospect of infecting
them.

[13] The figures here given are based on those of Papee, Wwednesky,
Raff, Sederholm, and others. The recently published investigations
of the Baltimore Vice Commission showed that 63.7 per cent of 289
prostitutes examined by the Wassermann test had syphilis. Of 266
examined for gonorrhea, 92.1 per cent showed its presence. Nearly
half the girls examined had both diseases and only 3.39