There are few good estimates of the extent of late accidents, as we often call the serious later complications in syphilis, or of the part that they play in medicine as a whole. Too many of them are inconspicuous, or confused with other internal troubles that result from them. Deaths from syphilis are all the time being hidden under the general terms "Bright's disease," or "heart disease," or "paralysis," or "apoplexy." It is a hopeful fact that, even under unfavorable conditions, only a comparatively small percentage, from 10 to 20 per cent, seem to develop obvious late accidents. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that the obscure costs of syphilis are becoming more apparent all the time, and the influence of the disease in shortening the life of our arteries and of other vital structures is more and more evident. There is still good reason for avoiding the effects of syphilis by every means at our disposal--by avoiding syphilis itself in the first place, and by early recognition of the disease and efficient treatment, in the second. +Late Syphilis of the Nervous System--Locomotor Ataxia.+--The ways in which late syphilis can attack the nervous system form the real terrors of the disease to most people. Locomotor ataxia and general paralysis of the insane (or softening of the brain) are the best known to the laity, _though only two of many ways in which syphilis can attack the nervous system_. Though their relation to the disease was long suspected, the final touch of proof came only as recently as 1913, when Noguchi and Moore, of the Rockefeller Institute, found the germs of the disease in the spinal cords of patients who had died of locomotor ataxia, and in the brains of those who had died of paresis. The way in which the damage is done can scarcely be explained in ordinary terms, but, as in all late syphilis, a certain amount of the damage once done is beyond repair. Locomotor ataxia begins to affect the lower part of the spinal cord first, so that the earliest symptoms often come from the legs and from the bladder and rectum, whose nerves are injured. Other parts higher up may be affected, and changes resulting in total blindness and deafness not infrequently occur. Through the nervous system, various organs, especially the stomach, may be seriously affected, and excruciating attacks of pain with unmanageable attacks of vomiting (gastric crises) are apt to follow. This does not, of course, mean that all pain in the stomach with vomiting means locomotor ataxia. All sorts of obscure symptoms may develop in this disease, but the signs in the eyes and elsewhere are such that a decision as to what is the matter can usually be made without considering how the patient feels, and by evidence which is beyond his control.