_Venereal Diseases._—These continue to embarrass the social economist and to perplex and distress the profession. The misery and ill-health which they cause are incalculable, and the pity of it is that the cross is not always borne by the offender, but innocent women and children share the penalties. The gonorrhœal infection, so common, and often so little heeded, is a cause of much disease in parts other than those first affected. Syphilis claims its victims in every rank of life, at every age, and in all countries. We now treat it more thoroughly, but all attempts to check its ravages have been fruitless. Physicians have two important duties: the incessant preaching of continence to young men, and scrupulous care, in every case, that the disease may not be a source of infection to others, and that by thorough treatment the patient may be saved from the serious late nervous manifestations. We can also urge that in the interests of public health venereal diseases, like other infections, shall be subject to supervision by the State. The opposition to measures tending to the restriction of these diseases is most natural: on the one hand, from women, who feel that it is an aggravation of a shocking injustice and wrong to their sex; on the other, from those who feel the moral guilt in a legal recognition of the evil. It is appalling to contemplate the frightful train of miseries which a single diseased woman may entail, not alone on her associates, but on scores of the innocent—whose bitter cry should make the opponents of legislation feel that any measures of restriction, any measures of registration, would be preferable to the present disgraceful condition, which makes of some Christian cities open brothels and allows the purest homes to be invaded by the most loathsome of all diseases. _Leprosy._—Since the discovery of the germ of this terrible disease systematic efforts have been made to improve the state of its victims and to promote the study of the conditions under which the disease prevails. The English Leprosy Commission has done good work in calling attention to the widespread prevalence of the disease in India and in the East. In this country leprosy has been introduced into San Francisco by the Chinese, and into the Northwestern States by the Norwegians, and there are foci of the disease in the Southern States, particularly Louisiana, and in the province of New Brunswick. The problem has an additional interest since the annexation of Hawaii and the Philippine Islands, in both of which places leprosy prevails extensively. By systematic measures of inspection and the segregation of affected individuals the disease can readily be held in check. It is not likely ever to increase among native Americans, or again gain such a foothold as it had in the Middle Ages.