not only through the efficiency of quinin, but also through preventive measures directed at mosquitos, which are the carriers of the disease from person to person.  But allowing for this, if it becomes possible to apply mercury and salvarsan as thoroughly to the prevention and treatment of syphilis as quinin can be applied to malaria, syphilis will soon be a rarity over the larger part of the civilized world.  To bring the specific remedies for syphilis and the patient together constitutes, then, one of the greatest problems which confronts us in the control of the disease at the present day.

MERCURY

+Mercury in the Treatment of Syphilis.+—­Mercury is, of course, familiar to every one, and there is nothing peculiar about the mercury used in the treatment of syphilis.  The fluid metallic mercury itself may be used in the form of salves, in which the mercury is mixed with fatty substances and rubbed into the skin.  Mercury can be vaporized and the vapor inhaled, and probably the efficiency of mercury when rubbed into the skin depends to no small extent on the inhalation of the vapor which is driven off by the warmth of the body.  Mercury in the form of chemical salts or compounds with other substances can be given as pills or as liquid medicine.  Similarly, the metal itself or some of its compounds can be injected in oil with a hypodermic needle into the muscles, and the drug absorbed in this way.

+Misconceptions Concerning Mercury.+—­The use of mercury in syphilis is nearly as old, in Europe at least, as the disease itself.  The drug was in common use in the fifteenth century for other conditions, and was promptly tried in the new and terrible disease as it spread over Europe, with remarkable results.  But doses in the old days were anything but homeopathic, and overdoses of mercury did so much damage that for a time the drug fell into undeserved disfavor.  Many of the superstitions and popular notions about mercury originated at this period in its history.  It was supposed to make the bones “rot” and the teeth fall out, an idea which one patient in every ten still entertains and offers as an objection when told he must take mercury.  Insufficiently treated syphilis is, of course, what makes the bones “rot,” and not the mercury used in treating the disease.  Mercury apparently has no effect on the bones whatever.  The influence of the drug on the teeth is more direct and refers to the symptoms caused by overdoses.  No physician who knows his business ever gives mercury at the present time to the point where the teeth are in any danger of falling out.