+Syphilis and Mental Disease.+—­Williams,[7] before the American Public Health Association, has recently carefully summarized the role of syphilis in the production of insanity, and the cost of the disease to the State from the standpoint of mental disease alone.  He estimates that 10 per cent of the patients who enter the Massachusetts State hospitals for the insane are suffering from syphilitic insanity.  Fifteen per cent of those at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital have syphilis.  In New York State hospitals, 12.7 per cent of those admitted have syphilitic mental diseases.  In Ohio, 12 per cent were admitted to hospitals for the same reason.  An economic study undertaken by Williams of 100 men who died at the Boston State Hospital of syphilitic mental disease, the cases being taken at random, showed that the shortening of life in the individual cases ranged from eight to thirty-eight years, and the total life loss was 2259 years.  Of ten of these men the earning capacity was definitely known, and through their premature death there was an estimated financial loss of $212,248.  It cost the State of Massachusetts $39,312 to care for the 100 men until their death.  Seventy-eight were married and left dependent wives at the time of their commission to the hospital.  In addition to the 100 men who became public charges, 109 children were thrown upon society without the protection of a wage-earner.  Williams estimates, on the basis of published admission figures to Massachusetts hospitals, that there are now in active life, in that state alone, 1500 persons who will, within the next five years, be taken to state hospitals with syphilitic insanity.

    [7] Williams, F. E.:  “Preaching Health,” Amer.  Jour.  Pub.  Health,
    1917, vi, 1273.

+Frequency of Locomotor Ataxia and General Paralysis.+—­The percentage of all syphilitic patients who develop either locomotor ataxia or paresis varies in different estimates from 1 to 6 per cent of the total number who acquire syphilis.  The susceptibility to any syphilitic disease of the nervous system is hastened by the use of alcohol and by overwork or dissipation, so that the prevalence of them depends on the class of patients considered.  It is evident, though, that only a relatively small proportion of the total number of syphilitics are doomed to either of these fates.  Taking the population as a whole, the percentage of syphilitics who develop this form of late involvement probably does not greatly exceed 1 per cent.

+Treatment and Prevention of Late Syphilis of the Nervous System.+—­Locomotor ataxia and paresis, even more than other syphilitic diseases of the nervous system, are extremely hard to affect by medicines circulating in the blood, and for that reason do not respond to treatment with the ease that syphilis does in many other parts of the body.  Early locomotor ataxia can often be benefited or kept from getting any worse by the proper treatment.  For paresis,