ost improbable, it is most certain to occur.

PERSONAL HYGIENE IN SYPHILIS

Syphilis is a constitutional disease, affecting in one way or another
the whole body. For that reason, measures directed to improving the
general health and maintaining the resistance of the patient at the
highest point have an important place in the management of the disease.
By his habits and mode of life a person with syphilis does much to help
or hinder his cure, and to protect or endanger those around him. For
that reason a statement of general principles may well be drawn up to
indicate what is desirable in these regards.

+A Well-balanced Life.+--First, for his own sake, a syphilitic should
live a well-balanced and simple life so far as possible. In this disease
the organs and structures of the body which are subject to greatest
strain are the ones most likely to suffer the serious effects of the
disease. Worry and anxiety, excessive mental work, long hours without
proper rest, strain the nervous system and predispose it to attack.
Excessive physical work, fatigue, exhaustion, poor food, bad air,
exposure, injure the bodily resistance. Excesses of any kind are as
injurious as deprivation. In fact, it is the dissipated, the high
livers, who go to the ground with the disease even quicker than those
who have to pinch.

+Alcohol.+--Alcohol in any form, in particular, has been shown by
extensive experience, especially since the study of the nervous system
in syphilis has been carried to a fine point, to have an especially
dangerous effect on the syphilitic. Alcohol damages not only the nervous
system, but also the blood vessels, and makes an unrivaled combination
in favor of early syphilitic apoplexy, general paresis, and locomotor
ataxia. A syphilitic who drinks at all is a bad risk, busily engaged in
throwing away his chances of cure. Even mild alcoholic beverages are
undesirable and the patient should lose no time in dropping them
entirely.

+Tobacco.+--Tobacco has a special place reserved for it as an
unfavorable influence on the course of syphilis. It is dangerous to
others for a syphilitic to smoke or chew because, more than any other
one thing, it causes the recurrence of contagious patches in the mouth.
It is remarkable how selfish many syphilitic men are on this point. In
spite of the most positive representations, they will keep on smoking.
Not a few of them pay for their selfishness with their lives. These
mucous patches in