considerable loss of tissue and scarring in these quarters and still
keep on living. But when late syphilis gets at the base of the aorta,
the great vessel by which the blood leaves the heart, and damages the
valves there, the numbering of the syphilitic's days begins. Few can
afford to replace much brain substance by tertiary growths and expect to
maintain their front against the world. Few are so young that they can
meet the handicap that old age and hardening of the arteries, brought on
prematurely by late syphilis, put upon them. When late syphilis affects
the vital structures and gains headway, the victim goes to the wall.
This is the really dangerous syphilis--the kind of syphilis that
shortens and cripples life.

There are few good estimates of the extent of late accidents, as we
often call the serious later complications in syphilis, or of the part
that they play in medicine as a whole. Too many of them are
inconspicuous, or confused with other internal troubles that result from
them. Deaths from syphilis are all the time being hidden under the
general terms "Bright's disease," or "heart disease," or "paralysis," or
"apoplexy." It is a hopeful fact that, even under unfavorable
conditions, only a comparatively small percentage, from 10 to 20 per
cent, seem to develop obvious late accidents. On the other hand, it must
not be forgotten that the obscure costs of syphilis are becoming more
apparent all the time, and the influence of the disease in shortening
the life of our arteries and of other vital structures is more and more
evident. There is still good reason for avoiding the effects of syphilis
by every means at our disposal--by avoiding syphilis itself in the first
place, and by early recognition of the disease and efficient treatment,
in the second.

+Late Syphilis of the Nervous System--Locomotor Ataxia.+--The ways in
which late syphilis can attack the nervous system form the real terrors
of the disease to most people. Locomotor ataxia and general paralysis of
the insane (or softening of the brain) are the best known to the laity,
_though only two of many ways in which syphilis can attack the nervous
system_. Though their relation to the disease was long suspected, the
final touch of proof came only as recently as 1913, when Noguchi and
Moore, of the Rockefeller Institute, found the germs of the disease in
the spinal cords of patients who had died of locomotor ataxia, and in
the brains of those who had died