which there is a specific, as compared
with tuberculosis, for which there is no specific, is incomparably in
favor of the former. If we had as powerful weapons against tuberculosis
as we have against syphilis, the disease would now be a rarity instead
of the disastrous plague it is. Comparing the situation in two diseases
for which we have specifics, such as syphilis and malaria, malaria has
lost most of its seriousness as a problem in any part of the world,
while syphilis is rampant everywhere. Malaria has, of course, been
extinguished not only through the efficiency of quinin, but also through
preventive measures directed at mosquitos, which are the carriers of the
disease from person to person. But allowing for this, if it becomes
possible to apply mercury and salvarsan as thoroughly to the prevention
and treatment of syphilis as quinin can be applied to malaria, syphilis
will soon be a rarity over the larger part of the civilized world. To
bring the specific remedies for syphilis and the patient together
constitutes, then, one of the greatest problems which confronts us in
the control of the disease at the present day.

MERCURY

+Mercury in the Treatment of Syphilis.+--Mercury is, of course, familiar
to every one, and there is nothing peculiar about the mercury used in
the treatment of syphilis. The fluid metallic mercury itself may be used
in the form of salves, in which the mercury is mixed with fatty
substances and rubbed into the skin. Mercury can be vaporized and the
vapor inhaled, and probably the efficiency of mercury when rubbed into
the skin depends to no small extent on the inhalation of the vapor which
is driven off by the warmth of the body. Mercury in the form of chemical
salts or compounds with other substances can be given as pills or as
liquid medicine. Similarly, the metal itself or some of its compounds
can be injected in oil with a hypodermic needle into the muscles, and
the drug absorbed in this way.

+Misconceptions Concerning Mercury.+--The use of mercury in syphilis is
nearly as old, in Europe at least, as the disease itself. The drug was
in common use in the fifteenth century for other conditions, and was
promptly tried in the new and terrible disease as it spread over Europe,
with remarkable results. But doses in the old days were anything but
homeopathic, and overdoses of mercury did so much damage that for a time
the drug fell into undeserved disfavor. Many of the superstitions and
p