+The Irresponsible.+--The irresponsible attitude of mind about syphilis forms the background of the darkest and most repellent chapter in the story of the disease. Yet we ought to confront it if we wish to master the situation. The irresponsible person has either no regard for, or no conception of, the rights of others where a dangerous contagious disease is concerned, and often little conception of, and less interest in, what is to his own ultimate advantage. Irresponsible syphilitics lack character first and sense next. Many of them, through the gods-defying combination of stupidity and ignorance, cannot be approached through any channel of reason or persuasion. The only argument capable of influencing such minds is compulsion. Others are, of course, mental defectives with criminal and perverted tendencies. Yet it is both amazing and discouraging to find how many irresponsibles there are in the ordinary and even in the better walks of life. To the wilful type of irresponsible person the transmission of a syphilitic infection is nothing, and cannot weigh a straw against the gratification of his desire or the pursuit of his own interest. The disease cannot teach such people anything, and if it cannot, how can the physician? Such people pursue their personal and sexual pleasure, marry, spread disaster around them, and outlive it all, perhaps brazenly to acknowledge the fact. Others, suave, attractive, agreeable, seductive, often masquerade as respectability, or constitute the perfumed, the romantic, the elegant carriers of disease. The proportion of ignorant to wilful irresponsibility can scarcely be estimated. But there is little choice between the two except on the score of the hopefulness of the latter. As examples of the mixture of types with which a large hospital is constantly dealing, I might offer the following at random, from my own recollections: A milkman came to a clinic one morning with an eruption all over his body and his mouth full of the most dangerously contagious patches. Two of us cornered him and explained to him in full why he should come in if only for twenty-four hours. He promised to be back next morning and disappeared. Another, a butcher in the same condition, put his wife, whom he had already infected, into the hospital, and in spite of every argument by all the members of the staff, went home to attend to his business--the selling of meat over the counter. A lunch-room helper, literally oozing germs, was after several days induced to come up for an examination and promised to begin treatment, whereupon he disappeared. A college student reported with an early primary sore. "X----," I said, "If you will pledge me your honor as a gentleman never to take another chance and not to marry until I say you are cured I will use salvarsan on you, which is just about as scarce as gold now, and give you a chance for abortive cure." He pledged himself, and six months later there was every sign that we were going to secure a