We have crippled the power of tuberculosis through knowledge,--wide-spread, universal knowledge,--rather than through any miraculous discoveries other than that of the cause and the possibility of cure. We shall in time obliterate cancer by the same means. Make a disease a household word, and its power is gone. We are still far from that day with syphilis. The third great plague is just dawning upon us--a disease which in four centuries has already cost a whole inferno of human misery and a heaven of human happiness. When we awake, we shall in our turn destroy the destroyer--and the more swiftly because of the power now in the hands of medicine to blot out the disease. To the day of that awakening books like this are dedicated. The facts here presented are the common property of the medical profession, and it is impossible to claim originality for their substance. Almost every sentence is written under the shadow of some advance in knowledge which cost a life-time of some man's labor and self-sacrifice. The story of the conquest of syphilis is a fabric of great names, great thoughts, dazzling visions, epochal achievements. It is romance triumphant, not the tissue of loathsomeness that common misconception makes it. The purpose of this book is accordingly to put the accepted facts in such a form that they will the more readily become matters of common knowledge. By an appeal to those who can read the newspapers intelligently and remember a little of their high-school physiology, an immense body of interested citizens can be added to the forces of a modern campaign against the third great plague. For such an awakening of public opinion and such a movement for wider cooeperation, the times are ready. JOHN H. STOKES. ROCHESTER, MINN. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I THE HISTORY OF SYPHILIS 11 CHAPTER II SYPHILIS AS A SOCIAL PROBLEM 15 CHAPTER III THE NATURE AND COURSE OF SYPHILIS 21 The Prevalence of Syphilis 24 The Primary Stage 26 CHAPTER IV THE NATURE AND COURSE OF SYPHILIS (_Continued_) 35 The Secondary Stage 35 CHAPTER V THE NATURE AND COURSE OF SYPHILIS (_Continued_) 45 Late Syphilis (Tertiary Stage) 45 CHAPTER VI THE BLOOD TEST FOR SYPHILIS 54 CHAPTER VII THE TREATMENT OF SYPHILIS 60 General Considerations 60 Mercury 62 CHAPTER VIII THE TREATMENT OF SYPHILIS (_Continued_) 70 Salvarsan 70 CHAPTER IX THE CURE OF SYPHILIS 80 CHAPTER X HEREDITARY SYPHILIS 92