+The Blood Test in the Treatment and Cure of Syphilis.+--In addition to its value in recognizing the disease, the Wassermann test has a second field of usefulness in determining when a person is cured of syphilis, and is an excellent guide to the effect of treatment. Good treatment early in a case of syphilis usually makes the Wassermann test negative in a comparatively short time, and even a little treatment will do it in some cases. But will it stay negative if treatment is then stopped? In the high percentage of cases it will not. It will become positive again after a variable interval, showing that the disease has been suppressed but not destroyed. For that reason, if we wish to be sure of cure, we must continue treatment until the blood test has become negative and stays negative. This usually means repeated tests, over a period of several years, in connection with such a course of treatment as will be described later. During a large part of this time the blood test will be the only means of finding out how the disease is being affected by the treatment. To all outward appearance the patient will be well. He may even have been negative in repeated tests, and yet we know by experience that if treatment is stopped too soon, he will become positive again. There is no set rule for the number of negative tests necessary to indicate a cure. The whole thing is a matter of judgment on the part of an experienced physician, and to that judgment the patient should commit himself unhesitatingly. If a patient could once have displayed before him in visible form the immense amount of knowledge, experience, and labor which has gone into the devising and goes into the performing of this test, he would be more content to leave the decision of such questions to his physician than he sometimes is, and would be more alive to its reality and importance. The average man thinks it a rather shadowy and indefinite affair on which to insist that he shall keep on doctoring, especially after the test has been negative once or twice. Just as a negative test may occur while syphilis is still actively present and doing damage in the body, so a positive Wassermann test may persist long after all outward and even inward signs of the disease have disappeared. These fixed positives are still a puzzle to physicians. But many patients with fixed positives, if well treated regardless of their blood test, do not seem to develop the late accidents of the disease. If their nervous systems, on careful examination, are found not to be affected, they are reasonably safe as far as our present knowledge goes. People with fixed positives should accept the judgment of their physicians and follow their recommendations for treatment without worrying themselves gray over complications which may never develop.