It is somewhat difficult to explain how a chancrous sore is produced. Surmises are at our service, and those which are founded upon certain facts are the more likely to be true. For instance, a person receiving syphilis must contract it from another individual having it. The mere solitary act of coition will not spontaneously produce it, provided the party be clean, for that surely is not an excess; but having connexion with an infected one, and thereby exposing a healthy surface to a diseased one, becomes an infraction of one of nature’s laws. Well, the patient contaminating the other must have a chancre, which giving off, by contact, its morbid secretion, produces a specific result, namely, a small pimple. In men, the disease is generally contracted upon the frænum, glans penis, or prepuce, or upon the common skin of the body of the penis, but most frequently upon the interior. From the peculiar and alterable structure of the penis and its prepuce, the poison, unless well washed off, is apt to lodge in the folds thereof, and sooner or later it manifests its influence, which may occur in twenty-four hours, or may be withheld for months. Generally, however, seven or eight or nine days puts the patient out of suspense. The first symptoms consist in an itching, succeeded by a redness of the part, out of which is soon observed to spring up a small elevation or pimple. In connexions where haste, disproportion of size, or much excitement or excess prevails, an absolute abrasion of the skin often takes place, and the parts where such occur are generally the everted portion of the prepuce, or the frænum of the same. [Illustration] [Illustration] The accompanying drawings represent the extent of the redness and the first appearance of the pimple. The upper diagram alludes to the irritation and excoriation around the frænum, and the lower, the first evidence of a chancre. I am describing the most common form of chancre, such as is known in the profession as Mr. Hunter’s chancre. A perceptible hardness next ensues round the pimple, which becomes more elevated when it ulcerates, or, in other words, the head gets broken off and a little hollow is left. The tumor (for such it may be called) is generally of a limited circumference, seldom exceeding the size of a silver penny, unless in an advanced stage of the disease. When a chancre attacks the frænum, and undermines it, as it were, the frænum is often destroyed; and of course, with its destruction, departs its property of controlling or of directing the orifice of the urethra in urinating, or in the emission of the semen. [Illustration] This drawing exhibits three ulcers: one on the prepuce, another under the frænum, having eaten its way through, as marked by the black cross-line, and the third situated on the glans.