+Healthy Children of Syphilitic Mothers.+--If the mother of a syphilitic child has the disease, is it equally true that a syphilitic mother can never bear a healthy child? It certainly is not, especially in the late years of the disease, after it has spent much of its force. When the multitudes of germs present in the secondary period have died out, whether as a result of treatment or in the normal course of the disease, a woman who still has syphilis latent in her or even in active tertiary form, may bear a healthy child. Such a child may be perfectly healthy in every particular, and not only not have syphilis, but show no sign that the mother had the disease. It is in the period of active syphilis, the three, four, or five years following her infection, that the syphilitic mother is most likely to bear syphilitic children. +Non-hereditary Syphilis in Children.+--Syphilis in children is not always hereditary, even though the signs of it appear only a short time after birth. A woman who at the beginning of her pregnancy was free from the disease, may acquire it while she is still carrying the child as a result of her husband's becoming infected from some outside source. The limitation which pregnancy may put on sexual indulgence leads some men to seek sexual gratification elsewhere than with their wives. The husband becoming infected, then infects his pregnant wife. There are no absolute rules about the matter, but if the mother is not infected until the seventh month of her pregnancy, the child is likely to escape the hereditary form of the disease. On the other hand, imagine the prospects for infection when the child is born through a birth-canal filled with mucous patches or with a chancre on the neck of the womb. Children infected in this way at birth do not develop the true hereditary form of the disease, but get the acquired form with a chancre and secondary period, just as in later life.