Syphilis

It seems desirable, at this point, to take up the hereditary
transmission of syphilis in advance of the other modes of transmitting
the disease, since it is practically a problem all to itself.

Syphilis is one of the diseases whose transmission from parent to child
is frequent enough to make it a matter of grave concern. It is, in fact,
the great example of a disease which may be acquired before birth. Just
as syphilis is caused only by a particular germ, so hereditary syphilis
is also due to the same germ, and occurs as a result of the passage of
that germ from the mother's body through the membranes and parts
connecting the mother and child, into the child. Hereditary syphilis is
not some vague, indefinite constitutional tendency, but syphilis, as
definite as if gotten from a chancre, though differing in some of its
outward signs.

+Transmission of Syphilis From Mother to Child.+--It is a well-known
fact that the mothers of syphilitic children often seem conspicuously
healthy. For a long time it was believed that the child could have
syphilis and the mother escape infection. The child's infection was
supposed to occur through the infection of the sperm cells of the father
with the germ of syphilis. When the sperm and the egg united in the
mother's body, and the child developed, it was supposed to have syphilis
contracted from the father, and the mother was supposed to escape it
entirely in the majority of such cases. This older idea has been largely
given up, chiefly as a result of the enormous mass of evidence which the
Wassermann test has brought to light about the condition of mothers who
bear syphilitic children, but themselves show no outward sign of the
disease. It is now generally believed that there is no transmission of
syphilis to the child by its father, the father's share of
responsibility for the syphilis lying in his having infected the mother.
None the less, it must be conceded that this is still debatable ground,
and that quite recently the belief that syphilis can be transmitted by
the father has been supported on theoretical grounds by good observers.

+Absence of Outward Signs in Syphilitic Mothers.+--The discovery that
the mother of a syphilitic child has syphilis is of great importance in
teaching us how hereditary syphilis can be avoided by preventing
infection of the mother. It is even more important to understand because
of the difficulty of convincing the seemingly healthy mot