In the case of syphilis, serious and often permanent tissue change is produced as a result of the action of the microbe, and in this disease, to an absolute certainty, an effect may be produced upon the offspring. Many suppose that this is due to the transmission of the specific microbe itself from the body of one or both of the parents to the developing egg. That such a thing is not impossible is shown in the case of silk-worm disease, in which the spores are to be found within the egg of the silk-worm moth. These spores subsequently develop and attack the tissues of the grub of the next generation. In syphilis the same kind of thing no doubt occurs; for a syphilitic child may subsequently infect the mother or nurse during the period of suckling. But there are other cases in this disease which appear hardly to be explained so easily, and we have to assume that the germinal cells are themselves changed in some way during their sojourn in the parental body, for after a certain time the disease is no longer capable of transmission by the parent, and the children born after this period, though themselves diseased, are incapable of infecting those who tend them. We have every reason to believe, therefore, that there are no specific germs or microbes left in the body of the parent, and that we have to do solely with the more or less permanent change in the reproductive cells, produced by the microbes during their residence in the body of the parent. The children born during this period are frequently ill-nourished, possess recognisable indications of disease, and are subject to nervous and other affections. We have here, therefore, for the first time, distinct evidence that an obviously acquired constitutional disease is transmitted, and that that transmission is in some cases due to a direct effect of the action of the microbe upon the germinal cells. The microbe of syphilis, unlike the microbe of leprosy, but like that of measles, feeds on healthy blood and tissue. It attacks the strong as well as the weak, and, if the weak more readily succumb, yet the strong and vigorous are more apt to acquire it. It is not, therefore, selective, like leprosy, and this fact, added to that of its capacity of transmission, ranks it as a disease distinctly inimical to race progress. _Germs of Phthisis and Scrofula, our Racial Friends._