tion once or twice a year, and not grumble if they are called
upon to carry life insurance in the form of occasional short courses of
treatment for the rest of their days.

+Efficient Treatment.+--The third essential is efficient treatment,
about the nature of which there is still some dispute. The controversy,
however, is mainly about details. In the modern methods for treatment of
syphilis both salvarsan and mercury are used, as a rule, and keep the
patient decidedly busy for the first year taking rubs and injections,
and pretty busy for the second. The patient is not incapacitated for
carrying on his usual work. The intervals of rest between courses of
salvarsan and mercury are short. In the third year the intervals of rest
grow longer, and in the absence of symptoms the patient has more chance
to forget the trouble. Here the doctor's difficulties begin, for after
two or three negative blood tests with a clear skin, all but the most
conscientious patients disappear from observation. These are the ones
who may pay later for the folly of their earlier years.

The aim in syphilis, then, is to crush the disease at its outset by a
vigorous campaign. Not until an amount of treatment which experience
has shown to be an average requirement has been given, is it safe to
draw breath and wait to see what the effect on the enemy has been.
Dilatory tactics and compromises are often more dangerous than giving a
little more than the least amount of treatment possible, for good
measure. This is, of course, always provided the behavior of the body
under the ordeal of treatment is closely studied and observed by an
expert and that it is not blindly pushed to the point where injury is
done by the medicine rather than the disease.

+The Importance of Salvarsan.+--Salvarsan is an absolute essential in
the treatment of those early infections in which an abortive cure can be
hoped for, and in them it must be begun without a day's delay. To some
extent, the abortive cure of the disease, with its 100 per cent
certainty, will therefore remain a luxury until the public is aroused to
the necessity of providing it under safe conditions and without
restrictions for all who need it. At all stages of the disease after the
earliest it is an aid, and a powerful one, but it cannot do the work
alone, as mercury usually can. But though mercury is efficient, it is
slow, and the greater rapidity of action of salvarsan and its power to
control infectious