In thus again adverting to Mr. Hunter’s name, it is chiefly to observe, that the basis of my own thoughts and practice has been built upon his writings; and therefore, in being thus explicit in describing syphilis and its multitudinous varieties, the reader is assured that what is here written is, at all events, well founded, and not compounded of the many new adventurising propositions of the day. Mr. Hunter considered that contamination took place about the beginning of the local complaints; that no person was safe from lues while the original sore was present, and not under treatment; but that, if the seeds of lues were not already implanted in the constitution, the consequences might be averted by treatment. Children are born infected with lues, which they derive from their parents; for instance, a man laboring under secondary, or primary symptoms, cohabits with a healthy female, the female _may_ escape both diseases, but the child may inherit them. Instances have been known of children so infected, conveying the disease to the wet nurse, to whose care they may be removed; and, like other infectious disorders, the complaint may be diffused _ad infinitum_. There is an impression abroad, that, like consumption, healthy persons are obnoxious to the breath and perspiration of the afflicted; but, as in many other conjectures, corroboration is wanted to prove the fact. Syphilis is divided into primary and secondary; but modern pathologists add a third stage, called tertiary symptoms. Hunter used to divide lues into two orders; the first was the most frequent form of the complaint, after chancre and bubo; the second, the remaining symptoms. The former consisted of the affections of the skin, throat, nose, mouth, and tongue; the latter, the bones and their coverings, called the periosteum and the fasciæ of muscles, as explained in the preliminary part of this publication. Lues does not always exhibit itself according to this arrangement; which circumstance explains that the occurrence is more owing to conditions of health, and peculiar tendencies of the structures involved to receive the contamination, than to any properties of the animal poison. He considers, also, that the development of the disease depends much upon the state of weather, and the care the patient may bestow upon himself; cold being a formidable predisposer to the extension of secondary symptoms, and that the parts least protected are generally the first to become diseased. Hence the throat usually exhibits a morbid action before the skin, furthermore, upon the cure of the more superficial parts of the body; and, therefore, suddenly suspending treatment, the symptoms manifest themselves in the deeper seated. The deduction from this statement is, a necessity for especial care in the clothing of the body, and the continuance of the treatment some little while after all external evidences of the complaint have disappeared.