+Estimated Risk of Infecting the Wife.+--How serious is the risk of infecting the wife if a man should marry during the contagious period of syphilis? This will depend a good deal on the frequency of relapses after the active secondary stage. On this point Sperk estimated that in 1518 patients, only ten escaped relapses entirely. These were, however, not patients that had been specially well treated. Keyes, quoted by Pusey, estimated, on the basis of his private records, that the chances taken by a syphilitic husband who used no special precautions to prevent infecting his wife were twelve to one the first year in favor of infection, five to two the second year, and one to four the third year, being negligible after the fourth year. +Syphilis in the Father.+--Even while we recognize the infection of women and children as the greatest risk in marriage we should not lose sight of the cost to society which syphilis in the father of the family himself may entail. For such a man to be stricken by some of the serious accidents of late syphilis throws his family as well as himself upon society. A syphilitic infection which has not been cured not only makes a man a poor risk to an insurance company, but a poor risk to the family which has to look to him for support and for his share and influence in the bringing up of the children. A sufficient number of men and women in the thirties and forties are crippled, made dependent, or lost to the world entirely, to make the responsibilities of the family when assumed by persons with untreated or poorly treated syphilis a matter of some concern, whether or not they are still able to transmit the disease to others.