rchives
of Neurology and Psychiatry_, vol. iv, 1909.

[225] There is some difference of opinion on this point, and though it
seems probable that early and thorough treatment usually cures the disease
in a few years and renders further complications highly improbable, it is
not possible, even under the most favorable circumstances, to speak with
absolute certainty as to the future.

[226] "That syphilis has been, and is, one of the chief causes of physical
degeneration in England cannot be denied, and it is a fact that is
acknowledged on all sides," writes Lieutenant-Colonel Lambkin, the medical
officer in command of the London Military Hospital for Venereal Diseases.
"To grapple with the treatment of syphilis among the civil population of
England ought to be the chief object of those interested in that most
burning question, the physical degeneration of our race" (_British Medical
Journal_, August 19, 1905).

[227] F.W. Mott, "Syphilis as a Cause of Insanity," _British Medical
Journal_, October 18, 1902.

[228] It can seldom be proved in more than eighty per cent. of cases, but
in twenty per cent. of old syphilitic cases it is commonly impossible to
find traces of the disease or to obtain a history of it. Crocker found
that it was only in eighty per cent. of cases of absolutely certain
syphilitic skin diseases that he could obtain a history of syphilitic
infection, and Mott found exactly the same percentage in absolutely
certain syphilitic lesions of the brain; Mott believes (e.g., "Syphilis in
Relation to the Nervous System," _British Medical Journal_, January 4,
1908) that syphilis is the essential cause of general paralysis and tabes.

[229] Audry. _La Semaine Medicale_, June 26, 1907. When Europeans carry
syphilis to lands inhabited by people of lower race, the results are often
very much worse than this. Thus Lambkin, as a result of a special mission
to investigate syphilis in Uganda, found that in some districts as many as
ninety per cent, of the people suffer from syphilis, and fifty to sixty
per cent, of the infant mortality is due to this cause. These people are
Baganda, a highly intelligent, powerful, and well-organized tribe before
they received, in the gift of syphilis, the full benefit of civilization
and Christianity, which (Lambkin points out) has been largely the cause of
the spread of the disease by breaking down social customs and emancipating
the women. Christianity is powerful enough to break dow