The Board of Pension Commissioners ruled that the condition had been aggravated _by_ service. (See Case E, “aggravated _on_ service.”) 1. In view of the fact that the majority of the cases here abstracted happen to be in common soldiers, is there any evidence bearing on relative incidence in officers and men? Quoting R. L. Richards: “The percentage of paresis cases among officers alone is variously estimated from 50 per cent in the German army (Stier) to 58.9 per cent in the Austrian army (Drastich). Since paresis is a disease of more advanced life, it is but natural that the percentage of paresis among officers, non-commissioned officers, and older soldiers should be higher than among the whole military body, where the average age is, as we have seen, well below thirty years. Hence the above figures do not mean a greater prevalence of syphilis among those classes, but that we have no means of knowing how many of the others develop paresis. If anything it shows that these ‘soldiers by calling,’ have a more stable mental make-up, since they succumb chiefly to an exogenous toxin.” Rayneau at the 19th Congress of French Alienists and Neurologists at Nantes in 1909, discussing the insane of the army from a medicolegal point of view, states that the most frequent mental disease amongst officers and soldiers is general paresis. At least, this disease is the most frequent basis of invaliding, retirement, or placing in the inactive list. He states that French and foreign statistics are at one upon this matter, quoting Christian as finding 32% among the soldiers interned at Charenton; Gamier at Dijon, 59%; Meilhon at Quimper, 42% and Talon at Marseilles, 33.8%. Grilli found 31 of 40 officers interned in Florence, Sienna and Milan victims of general paresis. Stier’s German statistics indicate about 50%. Rayneau himself found 16 of 20 officers paretic and 17 out of 27 subalterns and _gendarmes_.