bent
surfaces, especially of metal, are unfavorable for the germ.
Wash-basins, dishes, silverware, and toilet articles are usually
satisfactorily disinfected by hot soapsuds, followed by drying. Barbers,
dentists, nurses, and physicians who take care at least to disinfect
instruments and other objects brought into contact with patients with
carbolic acid and alcohol will never transmit syphilitic infection to
others. Toilet-seats, bath-tubs, and door-knobs, although theoretically
dangerous, are practically never so, and syphilitic infection
transmitted by them can be dismissed as all but unknown. This is in
marked contrast to gonorrhea, which in the case of little girls can be
transmitted apparently by toilet-seats. Much depends, as has been said,
on placing the germ on a favorable ground for inoculation, and the bare
skin, unless the virus is massaged or rubbed in, is certainly not a
favorable situation. Many experts do not hesitate to handle infectious
lesions with the fingers provided the skin is not broken, relying simply
on the immediate use of soap and water, and perhaps alcohol, to remove
the germ. While this may be a risk, it should, none the less, reassure
those who are inclined to an unreasoning terror of infection whenever
they encounter the disease.

+Transmission Under the Conditions of Every-day Life.+--The question of
just how dangerous the worker with foodstuffs may be to others when he
has active contagious lesions is unsettled. Recent surveys of various
types of workers have tended to show that syphilis in transmissible form
is not especially prevalent among them. The same general principle
applies here as elsewhere. The risk of infection with syphilis
increases with dirty and unsanitary conditions, and becomes serious when
there is opportunity for moist materials to be transferred to sensitive
surfaces, like the mouth, sufficiently soon after they have left the
syphilitic person for the germs to be still alive. That the real extent
of the risk is not known does not make it any the less important that
persons who have opportunity to handle materials in which this may occur
should be subject to frequent sanitary inspection. Restaurants in which
the silverware is not properly cleaned, and is used over and over at
frequent intervals, and in which there is a careless and unsanitary type
of personal service, can hardly be regarded as safe. While there is no
need for hysterical alarm over such possibilities,