A question worthy of inquiry is, why gonorrhœa and syphilis should be infectious? _Contagion_ is a word that many medical men would expel from worldly usage, not believing in its existence; that is to say, the extension of a fever or epidemic, for instance, is not traceable to the disease seizing the individual, but to the peculiar aptitude of the party to become the recipient of it. Consumption is of the most extensive prevalence; but it only occurs in the delicate—those peculiarly formed, or rendered apt for it, from the circumstance of their lungs being hereditarily feebly constructed, or disordered through inflammation following a cold, and which effects are traceable to an infraction of some of nature’s laws. Sickly children owe their condition to their sickly parents, or to their physical mal-education, or some other positive violation of nature’s regulations; and in like manner, where the fire rages or the wind blows, the feeblest and least protected become the earliest victims. Both gonorrhœa and syphilis furnish a remarkably irritating purulent fluid, which, applied to delicate surfaces, produces certain effects. Experiments have not been made to multiply these effects, beyond those incurred by sexual freedom; and the one of inoculation by the French surgeons, as quoted; but accident has proved that the eye, for instance, puts on, after contact with the discharge of gonorrhœa, the same kind of inflammation as follows its contact in coition with the antagonist generative organs. The rectum has also been the seat of venereal affection; and instances have been known of the mouth being also the recipient of disease communicated by a deposition of the poison. If there be such a thing as contagion, it certainly exists in the venereal disease; for, although I admit it (the disease) may occur spontaneously, or be generated by half a dozen of each of the sexes herding and cohabiting together, and neglecting the duties of cleanliness, or committing excesses, those very circumstances imply that the disease can be extended, notwithstanding a majority of the careful and hardy may escape, after a risk of the same. The fact of its contagious properties is not upset, because escape is owing to the non-susceptibility of the parties, and the caution they exercise to prevent a lodgment of, or contact with, the poisonous matter.