+Course of Hereditary Syphilis in the Infant.+--The course of syphilis in the child tends to follow certain general lines. The disease, being contracted before birth, shows its most active manifestations early in life. The stillborn child is dead of its disease. The living child may be born with an eruption, or it may not develop it for several weeks or months. It is thought by some that these delayed eruptions represent infections at birth. Hereditarily syphilitic children are filled with the spirochetes, the germs of the disease. They are in every tissue and organ; the child is literally riddled with them. In spite of this it may for a time seem well. The typical syphilitic child, however, is thin, weak, and wasted. Syphilis hastens old age even in the strong. It turns the young child into an old man or woman at birth. The skin is wrinkled, the flesh flabby. The face is that of an old man--weazened, pinched, pathetic, with watery, bleary eyes, and snuffling nose. The mother often says that all the baby's trouble started with a bad cold. The disease attacks the throat, and turns the normal robust cry of a healthy infant into a feeble squawk. The belly may become enormously distended from enlargement of the internal organs, and the rest of the child dwindle to a skeleton. The eruptions are only a part of the picture and may be absent, but when they occur, are quite characteristic, as a rule, especially about the mouth and buttocks, and do not usually resemble the commoner skin complaints of infants. It is important to remember here that a badly nourished, sickly child with a distressing eczema is not necessarily syphilitic, and that only a physician is competent to pass an opinion on the matter. Syphilitic children in a contagious state are usually too sick to be around much, so that the risk to the general public is small. On the other hand, the risk to some woman who tries to mother or care for some one else's syphilitic child, if the disease is active, should be thoroughly appreciated. Women who are not specially trained or under the direction of a physician should not attempt the personal care of other people's sick children.