+Practical Points About the Test.+--Certain practical details about this test are of interest to every one. Blood for it is usually drawn from a small vein in the arm. The discomfort is insignificant--no more than that of a sharp pin-prick. Blood is drawn in the same way for other kinds of blood tests, so that a needle-prick in the arm is not necessarily for a Wassermann test. There is no cutting and no scar remains. The amount of blood drawn is small and does not weaken one in the least. The test is done on the serum or fluid part of the blood, after the corpuscles are removed. It can also be done on the clear fluid taken from around the spinal cord, and this is necessary in certain syphilitic nervous diseases. There is nothing about the test that need make anybody hesitate in taking it, and it is safe to say that, when properly done, the information that it gives is more than worth the trouble, especially to those who have at any time been exposed, even remotely, to the risk of infection. But the test must be well done, by a large hospital or through a competent physician or specialist, and the results interpreted to the patient by the physician and not by the laboratory that does the test, or in the light of the patient's own half-knowledge of the matter. Chapter VII The Treatment of Syphilis GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS +Scientific Methods of Treating Disease.+--In trying to treat diseases caused by germs, the physician finds himself confronted by several different problems. Certain of these diseases run their course and the patient gets well or dies, pretty much regardless of anything that can be done for him. In certain others, because of our knowledge of the way in which the body makes its fight against the germ, we are able either to prepare it against attack, as in the case of protective vaccination, or we are able to help it to come to its own defense after the disease has developed. This can be done either by supplying it with antitoxin from an outside source, or helping it to make its own antitoxin by giving it dead germs to practise on. In the third group, the smallest of the three, we are fortunate enough to know of some substance which will kill the germ in the body without killing the patient. For such diseases we are said to have a "specific" method of treatment. Syphilis is one of these diseases. It is not to be understood that there is a sharp line of division between these three groups, since in every disease we try as far as possible to use all the methods we can bring to bear. In pneumonia we have to let the body largely make its own fight, and simply help it to clear out the poisons formed by the germ, and keep the heart going until the crisis is past. In diphtheria, nowadays, we help the body out promptly by supplying it with antitoxin from an outside source, before it has time to make any for itself. We do the same thing for lockjaw if we are early enough. We practise the body on dead typhoid