The gist of the first essential, then, is to treat syphilis early rather than late. If this is done, the prospect of recovery is better than in many of the acute fevers, such as scarlet fever, a matter of every day familiarity, and better, on the whole, than in such a disease as tuberculosis. _Yet this does not mean that the men or women whose syphilis is discovered only after a lapse of years, must be abandoned to a hopeless fate._ For them, too, excellent prospects still exist, and careful, persistent treatment may, in a high percentage of cases, keep their symptoms under control for years, if not for the ordinary life-time. +The Time Required for Cure.+--Time is the second vital essential for cure. Here we stand on less certain ground than in the matter of the stage of the disease. The time necessary for cure is not a fixed one, and depends on the individual case. Long experience has taught us that the cure of syphilis is not a matter of weeks or months, as patients so often expect, but of years. For the cure of early primary syphilis ("abortive" cure) not the most enthusiastic will discharge a patient short of a year, and the conservative insist on two years or more of observation at least. In the fully developed infection in the secondary stage, three years is a minimum and four years an average for treatment to produce a cure. Five years of treatment and observation is not an uncommon period. In the later stages of the disease, when we are compelled to give up the ideal of radical cure, our best advice to syphilitic patients, as to those with old tuberculosis, is that after they have had two years of good treatment, they should submit to examination once or twice a year, and not grumble if they are called upon to carry life insurance in the form of occasional short courses of treatment for the rest of their days. +Efficient Treatment.+--The third essential is efficient treatment, about the nature of which there is still some dispute. The controversy, however, is mainly about details. In the modern methods for treatment of syphilis both salvarsan and mercury are used, as a rule, and keep the patient decidedly busy for the first year taking rubs and injections, and pretty busy for the second. The patient is not incapacitated for carrying on his usual work. The intervals of rest between courses of salvarsan and mercury are short. In the third year the intervals of rest grow longer, and in the absence of symptoms the patient has more chance to forget the trouble. Here the doctor's difficulties begin, for after two or three negative blood tests with a clear skin, all but the most conscientious patients disappear from observation. These are the ones who may pay later for the folly of their earlier years.