eets four hundred diseased women_.
Let it be supposed that the power of these four hundred to infect be
limited to twelve days, and that of every six persons who, at the rate
of one each night, have connection with these women, five become
infected, it will follow _that there will be four thousand men infected
every night, and consequently one million four hundred and sixty
thousand in the year_. Further, as there are every night four hundred
women diseased by these men, one hundred and eighty-two thousand five
hundred _public prostitutes will be syphilized during the year; hence,
one million six hundred and fifty-two thousand five hundred cases of
syphilis in both sexes occur every twelve months_.

"If, then, the entire population had intercourse with prostitutes in an
equal ratio, _the gross population of Great Britain, of all ages and
sexes, would, during eighteen years, have been affected with primary
syphilis_. Be it remembered, we do not assert that more than a million
and a half of _persons_ are attacked every year, but that that number of
_cases_ occurs annually in England, Wales, and Scotland, though the same
individual may be attacked more than once. Although it is evident that
all the estimates used for these calculations are (we know no other word
that expresses it) ridiculously low, yet we find that more than a
million and a half of cases of syphilis occur every year,--an amount
which is probably not half the actual number. How enormous, then, must
be the number of children born with secondary disease! How immense the
mortality among them! How vast an amount of public and private money
expended on the cure of this disease!"

The same reviewer (P. S. Holland), in another article on the "Control of
Prostitution," observes that among the British troops syphilis is one of
the most frequent of diseases, about one hundred and eighty cases
occurring annually among every one thousand soldiers.

The effect of syphilis in depopulating the islands of the Pacific has
been pointed out in a former chapter; the nature and origin of the
disease that takes them off is unmistakable. Scrofula and rapid phthisis
are taking off the inhabitants at a rate that, in those islands most
affected, the native population will soon become extinct. According to
Lancereaux, in the Marquesas group the women do not live beyond the age
of thirty to thirty-five years, three or four months being the duration
of the disease. Ellis, in his "Pol