en a brief illness. A prolonged one often sets the victim
farther back in purse than forward in health. The better the services
which we wish to command in these days, usually, the greater the cost,
and expert supervision, at least, is desirable in syphilis. It is a
financial impossibility for many of the victims of syphilis to meet the
cost of a radical cure. It is all they can do to pay for symptomatic
care in order to get themselves back into condition to work. We cannot
then reasonably demand of these patients that they shall be cured, in
the interest of others, unless we provide them with the means. In
talking about public effort against syphilis, this matter will be taken
up again. We have recognized the obligation in tuberculosis. Let us now
provide for it in syphilis.

+Factors Controlling the Cure of Syphilis--Stage, Time, Effective
Treatment.+--Three factors enter into the radical cure of syphilis, upon
which the possibility of accomplishing it absolutely depends. The first
of these concerns the stage of the disease at which treatment is begun;
the second is the time for which it is kept up; and the third is the
cooeperation of doctor and patient in the use of effective methods of
treatment.

+Cure in the Primary Stage.+--It goes almost without saying that the
prospect of curing a disease is better the earlier treatment is begun.
This is peculiarly so in syphilis. In the earliest days of the disease,
while the infection is still local and the blood test negative, the
prospects of radical cure are practically 100 per cent. This is the
so-called abortive cure, the greatest gift which salvarsan has made to
our power to fight syphilis. It depends on immediate recognition of the
chancre and immediate and strenuous treatment. So valuable is it that
several physicians of large experience have expressed the belief that
even in cases in which we are not entirely sure the first sore is
syphilitic, we should undertake an abortive treatment for syphilis. This
view may be extreme, but it illustrates how enormously worth while the
early treatment of syphilis is.

+Cure in the Secondary Stage.+--The estimation of the prospect of
recovery when the secondary symptoms have appeared and the germs are in
the blood is difficult, owing to the rapid changes in our knowledge of
the disease, which are taking place almost from day to day. The patient
usually presses his physician for an estimate of his chances, and in
such cases, af