Bruhns recently reported the outcome of the Wassermann test repeated about yearly from 1908 to 1915 in one hundred private cases infected with syphilis ten or more years before the time of the report. In forty-two the test was constantly negative; in thirty-two, positive at first but negative later; in seven, constantly positive notwithstanding repeated courses of treatment; in three, positive at first, then long negative, but finally changing to positive again; in eight, negative at first, then positive, and finally negative; and in eight, negative at first but finally positive. The last three groups are particularly significant. In some the long negative reaction, for five or six years, indicated cure, and physicians would pronounce such cases positively cured; but suddenly they changed to a positive reaction without any clinical manifestations showing at the time. After renewed courses of treatment in the following two years the reaction became negative. Among the cases with constant negative reaction there were some who developed brain syphilis, or tabes, proving that they were not cured despite the absence of clinical manifestations of the disease and the negative Wassermann reactions. Professor Blaschko of Berlin, at the seventeenth International Medical Congress in 1913, in the presence of Ehrlich, Wassermann and Hata, said no one could even talk of a cure of syphilis until an interval of ten years without symptoms had occurred. Where a blood Wassermann is negative a spinal fluid reaction may be positive. In from 60 to 75 per cent. of all cases of tabes or paresis members of the family other than the patient have shown infection. The proportion of infections in the families of tabetics and paretics is far larger than that found in families in which the syphilis does not go on to these extremes. Tabes is also called locomotor ataxia. It is a degeneration of a part of the spinal cord, with unsteadiness and incoördination of motion, lightning pains, disorders of vision, and other symptoms. Paresis is softening of the brain, with insanity and death. These and other facts strongly indicate that the form of syphilis which ends in tabes or paresis remains infectious over a much longer time than ordinary syphilis does. No one has cured either tabes or paresis. Raven reported in 1914 an investigation of ninety families in each of which a case of metalues had developed. The interval between the date of infection and the marriage was known in about half of these, and it was four years in two families, five years in one, and from _six to twenty-one years_ in ten! Fournier, in 4400 cases of syphilis, saw three cases where the tertiary symptoms appeared fifty years after infection, and in one case fifty-five years after infection. Bonnet[160] reported such a case which came to him for treatment fifty-four years after infection. The man had no children. [160] _Lyon Med._, November 7, 1907.