Syphilis is a disease of ancient if not of respectable origin. We read much of the possibility of so-called pre-Columbian syphilis, implying by that term that the Spaniards who came over to this country found it here and carried it with them back to Europe. This is probably the case, and yet the disease antedates the Christian era, as may be established by familiarity with ancient literature, whether Arabian, Egyptian, or Hebraic. No one can read the Psalms of David, for instance, without finding therein intrinsic evidence that the writer thereof, whoever he may have been, suffered from this disease. Of its antiquity, however, as well as of its universal distribution, we need not speak. History has shown that whenever it has appeared in a community previously unaffected by it, it has assumed malignant and epidemic features, and has spread rapidly while claiming many victims; on the other hand, in those communities where it has long been domesticated, it assumes usually a milder type, as though a racial immunity were being gradually established. _Syphilis is an infectious chronic disease, acquired either by inheritance or by contagion, mediate or immediate_, with a certain period of incubation, characterized by an initial lesion at the site of infection, which is followed in time by a series of systemic disturbances, usually quite characteristic, in a commonly determinate order. A large proportion of these consist of neoplastic lesions of the general type of the infectious granulomas. In the majority of instances it is of distinctly venereal origin, although not always. It is known among the common people as _pox_, while a frequent synonym for it in foreign literature is _lues venerea_, or often _lues_ alone, the adjective being _luetic_. _Syphilis is always transmitted as such_ and is not interchangeable with leprosy, tuberculosis, or anything else, although it is not unfrequently complicated with them as well as with cancer. It has certain resemblances to the exanthemas in its periods of incubation, and in the fact that one attack is supposed to confer immunity, as well as that many of the typical symptoms of syphilis pertain to the skin and mucous membrane; further resemblances may also be found in each case.