father, and the mother was supposed to escape it entirely in the majority of such cases.  This older idea has been largely given up, chiefly as a result of the enormous mass of evidence which the Wassermann test has brought to light about the condition of mothers who bear syphilitic children, but themselves show no outward sign of the disease.  It is now generally believed that there is no transmission of syphilis to the child by its father, the father’s share of responsibility for the syphilis lying in his having infected the mother.  None the less, it must be conceded that this is still debatable ground, and that quite recently the belief that syphilis can be transmitted by the father has been supported on theoretical grounds by good observers.

+Absence of Outward Signs in Syphilitic Mothers.+—­The discovery that the mother of a syphilitic child has syphilis is of great importance in teaching us how hereditary syphilis can be avoided by preventing infection of the mother.  It is even more important to understand because of the difficulty of convincing the seemingly healthy mother of a syphilitic child that she herself has the disease and should be treated for it, or she will have other syphilitic children.  Just why the mother may never have shown an outward sign of syphilis and yet have the disease and bear syphilitic children is a question we cannot entirely answer, any more than we can explain why all obvious signs of syphilis are absent in some patients even without treatment, while others have one outbreak after another, and are never without evidence of their infection, unless it is suppressed by treatment.  Probably at least a part of the explanation lies in the fact, already mentioned, that syphilis is a milder disease in women than in men, and has more opportunities for concealing its identity.

+Healthy Children of Syphilitic Mothers.+—­If the mother of a syphilitic child has the disease, is it equally true that a syphilitic mother can never bear a healthy child?  It certainly is not, especially in the late years of the disease, after it has spent much of its force.  When the multitudes of germs present in the secondary period have died out, whether as a result of treatment or in the normal course of the disease, a woman who still has syphilis latent in her or even in active tertiary form, may bear a healthy child.  Such a child may be perfectly healthy in every particular, and not only not have syphilis, but show no sign that the mother had the disease.  It is in the period of active syphilis, the three, four, or five years following her infection, that the syphilitic mother is most likely to bear syphilitic children.