uencing such minds is compulsion. Others are, of course, mental
defectives with criminal and perverted tendencies. Yet it is both
amazing and discouraging to find how many irresponsibles there are in
the ordinary and even in the better walks of life. To the wilful type of
irresponsible person the transmission of a syphilitic infection is
nothing, and cannot weigh a straw against the gratification of his
desire or the pursuit of his own interest. The disease cannot teach such
people anything, and if it cannot, how can the physician? Such people
pursue their personal and sexual pleasure, marry, spread disaster around
them, and outlive it all, perhaps brazenly to acknowledge the fact.
Others, suave, attractive, agreeable, seductive, often masquerade as
respectability, or constitute the perfumed, the romantic, the elegant
carriers of disease. The proportion of ignorant to wilful
irresponsibility can scarcely be estimated. But there is little choice
between the two except on the score of the hopefulness of the latter. As
examples of the mixture of types with which a large hospital is
constantly dealing, I might offer the following at random, from my own
recollections: A milkman came to a clinic one morning with an eruption
all over his body and his mouth full of the most dangerously contagious
patches. Two of us cornered him and explained to him in full why he
should come in if only for twenty-four hours. He promised to be back
next morning and disappeared. Another, a butcher in the same condition,
put his wife, whom he had already infected, into the hospital, and in
spite of every argument by all the members of the staff, went home to
attend to his business--the selling of meat over the counter. A
lunch-room helper, literally oozing germs, was after several days
induced to come up for an examination and promised to begin treatment,
whereupon he disappeared. A college student reported with an early
primary sore. "X----," I said, "If you will pledge me your honor as a
gentleman never to take another chance and not to marry until I say you
are cured I will use salvarsan on you, which is just about as scarce as
gold now, and give you a chance for abortive cure." He pledged himself,
and six months later there was every sign that we were going to secure a
perfect result. Suddenly he failed to appear for a treatment
appointment, and I never saw him again. But I did see a letter written
to him by the clinic which showed that he had c