s the
progenitor of various diseases, and that those who give this opinion the
greatest range are, unfortunately, nearest the truth. The breathing
organs, he remarks, are distinctly susceptible to injury from this
hereditary cause.

In 1854, at the Metropolitan Free Hospital, situated in the Jews'
quarter in London, Hutchinson observed that the proportion of Jews to
Christians among the out-patients was as one to three; at the same time
the proportion of cases of syphilis in the former to the latter was one
to fifteen. Now, this result was not due to any extra morality on the
part of the Jews, as fully one-half of the gonorrhoea cases occurred
among those of that faith. J. Royes Bell also observes the less
syphilization among circumcised races.[76]

The absence of the prepuce and the non-absorbing character of the skin
of the glans penis, made so by constant exposure, with the necessary and
unavoidably less tendency that these conditions give to favor syphilitic
inoculation, are not evidently without their resulting good effects. Now
and then syphilitic primary sores are found on the glans, or even in the
urethra or on the outside skin of the penis, or outer parts of the
prepuce; but the majority are, as a rule, situated either back of the
corona or on the reflected inner fold of the prepuce immediately
adjoining the corona, or they may be in the loose folds in the
neighborhood of the frenum, the retention of the virus seemingly being
assisted by the topographical condition and relation of the parts, and
its absorption facilitated by the thinness of the mucous membrane, as
well as by the active circulation and moisture and heat of the parts. It
must be evident that but for these favoring conditions the inoculation
or infection would and could not be either as sure or as frequent. Any
protecting mechanical aid that interferes with these favoring conditions
grants an immunity to the individual, even when he is freely exposed;
this protection has often been obtained by applying to the glans and
penis a substantial coat of some tenacious oil like castor-oil, which
was afterward gently washed off, first in a shower of tepid water and
afterward in a tepid bath of warm water and borax.

Horner, formerly of the navy, in his interesting little work on "Naval
Practice,"[77] relates that it was customary, in the older navy of the
United States, to allow public women to come on board at some of the
ports and to go down to the me