the infectious stage dangerous to others.  For a time life seems pretty well stripped of its pleasures for the man who may not smoke, must always think beforehand whether any contact which he makes with persons or things about him may subject others to risk of infection, and perhaps must meet the misunderstanding and condemnation of others whom he has to take into his confidence for the same purpose.  An element of moral courage and a keen sense of personal responsibility help to make the ideal patient in this disease.  To meet a treatment appointment promptly at the same day and hour week after week, to go through the drudgery of rubbing mercurial ointment, for example, to say nothing of the unpleasantness of the method to a cleanly person, night after night for weeks, takes unmistakable grit and a well-developed sense of moral obligation.  The man who has been cured of syphilis has passed through a discipline which calls for the best in him, and repays him in terms of better manhood as well as better health.

The physician’s cooeperation in the development of the necessary sense of responsibility and the requisite character basis for a successful treatment is invaluable.  To the large majority of the victims of the disease it is a severe shock to find out what ails them.  Many of them, without saying much about it, give up all hope for a worth-while life from the moment they learn of their condition.  Just as in the old days the belief that consumption was incurable cost nearly as many lives as the disease itself, by leading victims to give up the fight when a little persistence would have won it, so among many who acquire syphilis, especially when it is contracted under distressing circumstances, there is a lowering of the victims’ fighting strength, a sapping of their courage which makes them an easy prey to the indifference to cure that is so fatal in this disease.  The person with syphilis should have the benefit of all the friendly counsel, reassurance, and moral support that his physician can give, and such time and labor on the latter’s part are richly repaid.

+The Average State of Mind.+—­The average mental attitude stops tantalizingly short of the best type of conscientiousness.  Average patients are good cooeperators in the beginning of a course of treatment or while the symptoms are alarming or obvious, but their energy leaves them once they are outwardly cured.  The average patient only too often overrules his physician’s good judgment on trivial grounds, slight inconveniences, and temporary considerations, forgetting that cure is what he needs more than anything else in the world.  The deprivations go hard with this type of patients, and it is difficult, almost impossible, to persuade them to stop smoking or to abstain from sexual relations or other contacts that are apt to subject others to risk.  Average patients will almost never remain under the care of a physician until cured.  A year, or at the most two years, is all that can be