thus revealed the final
hiding place of one of the most dangerous and insidious foes of
humanity.[224]

There is no more subtle poison than that of syphilis. It is not, like
smallpox or typhoid, a disease which produces a brief and sudden storm, a
violent struggle with the forces of life, in which it tends, even without
treatment, provided the organism is healthy, to succumb, leaving little or
no traces of its ravages behind. It penetrates ever deeper and deeper into
the organism, with the passage of time leading to ever new manifestations,
and no tissue is safe from its attack. And so subtle is this all-pervading
poison that though its outward manifestations are amenable to prolonged
treatment, it is often difficult to say that the poison has been finally
killed out.[225]

The immense importance of syphilis, and the chief reason why it is
necessary to consider it here, lies in the fact that its results are not
confined to the individual himself, nor even to the persons to whom he may
impart it by the contagion due to contact in or out of sexual
relationships: it affects the offspring, and it affects the power to
produce offspring. It attacks men and women at the centre of life, as the
progenitors of the coming race, inflicting either sterility or the
tendency to aborted and diseased products of conception. The father alone
can perhaps transmit syphilis to his child, even though the mother escapes
infection, and the child born of syphilitic parents may come into the
world apparently healthy only to reveal its syphilitic origin after a
period of months or even years. Thus syphilis is probably a main cause of
the enfeeblement of the race.[226]

Alike in the individual and in his offspring syphilis shows its
deteriorating effects on all the structures of the body, but especially on
the brain and nervous system. There are, as has been pointed out by Mott,
a leading authority in this matter,[227] five ways in which syphilis
affects the brain and nervous system: (1) by moral shock; (2) by the
effects of the poison in producing anaemia and impaired general nutrition;
(3) by causing inflammation of the membranes and tissues of the brain; (4)
by producing arterial degeneration, leading on to brain-softening,
paralysis, and dementia; (5) as a main cause of the para-syphilitic
affections of general paralysis and tabes dorsalis.

It is only within recent years that medical men have recognized the
preponderant part played by acq