At the present day syphilis is universally
prevalent. In his excellent monograph Sturgis estimated in New
York, in 1873, that one out of 18 suffered from it; and White of
Philadelphia pronounces the opinion that "not less than 50,000
people in that city are affected with syphilis." According to
Rohe, on this basis Gihon estimates the number of syphilitics in
the United States at one time as 2,000,000.
To-day no disease, except possibly tuberculosis, is a greater
agency in augmenting the general mortality and furthering
sickness than syphilis. Its hereditary features, the numerous
ways in which it may be communicated outside of the performance
of the sexual act, and the careful way in which it is kept from
the sanitary authorities render it a scourge which, at the
present day, we seem to have no method of successfully
repressing.
Modern Mortality from Infectious Diseases.--As to the direct
influence on the mortality of the most common infectious diseases
of the present day, tuberculosis, universally prevalent, is
invariably in the lead. No race or geographic situation is exempt
from it. Osler mentions that in the Blood Indian Reserve of the
Canadian Northwest Territories, during six years, among a
population of about 2000 there were 127 deaths from pulmonary
consumption.
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