The Third Great Plague | Page 4

by a
combination of chemical and biological reasoning, salvarsan, one of the
most powerful weapons in existence against it. Ehrlich conceived the
whole make-up and properties of salvarsan when most of us find it a
hardship to pronounce its name. Schaudinn saw with the ordinary
lenses of the microscope in the living, moving germ, what dozens can
scarcely see today with the germ glued to the spot and with all the aid
of stains and dark-field apparatus. After all, it is brain-power focused to
a point that moves events, and to the immensity of that power the
history of our growing knowledge of syphilis bears the richest
testimony.

Chapter II
Syphilis as a Social Problem
The simple device of talking plain, matter-of-fact English about a thing
has a value that we are growing to appreciate more and more every day.
It is only too easy for an undercurrent of ill to make headway under
cover of a false name, a false silence, or misleading speech. The fact
that syphilis is a disease spread to a considerable extent by sexual
relations too often forces us into an attitude of veiled insinuation about
it, a mistaken delicacy which easily becomes prudish and insincere. It
is a direct move in favor of vulgar thinking to misname anything which
involves the intimacies of life, or to do other than look it squarely in the
eye, when necessity demands, without shuffling or equivocation. On
this principle it is worth while to meet the problem of a disease like
syphilis with an open countenance and straightforward honesty of
expression. It puts firm ground under our feet to talk about it in the
impersonal way in which we talk about colds and pneumonia and

bunions and rheumatism, as unfortunate, but not necessarily indecent,
facts in human experience. Nothing in the past has done so much for
the campaign against consumption as the unloosing of tongues. There
is only one way to understand syphilis, and that is to give it impartial,
discriminating discussion as an issue which concerns the general health.
To color it up and hang it in a gallery of horrors, or to befog it with
verbal turnings and twistings, are equally serious mistakes. The simple
facts of syphilis can appeal to intelligent men and women as worthy of
their most serious attention, without either stunning or disgusting them.
It is in the unpretentious spirit of talking about a spade as a spade, and
not as "an agricultural implement for the trituration of the soil," that we
should take stock of the situation and of the resources we can muster to
meet it.
+The Confusion of the Problem of Syphilis with Other Issues.+--Two
points in our approach to the problem of syphilis are important at the
outset. The first of these is to separate our thought about syphilis from
that of the other two diseases, gonorrhea, or "clap," and chancroids, or
"soft sores," which are conventionally linked with it under the label of
"venereal diseases."[2] The second is to separate the question of
syphilis at least temporarily from our thought about morals, from the
problem of prostitution, from the question as to whether continence is
possible or desirable, whether a man should be true to one woman,
whether women should be the victims of a double standard, and all the
other complicated issues which we must in time confront. Such a
picking to pieces of the tangle is simply the method of scientific
thought, and in this case, at least, has the advantage of making it
possible to begin to do something, rather than saw the air with vain
discussion.
[2] The three so-called venereal diseases are syphilis, gonorrhea, and
chancroid or soft ulcer. Gonorrhea is the commonest of the three, and is
an exceedingly prevalent disease. In man its first symptom is a
discharge of pus from the canal through which the urine passes. Its later
stages may involve the bladder, the testicles, and other important
glands. It may also produce crippling forms of rheumatism, and affect
the heart. Gonorrhea may recur, become latent, and persist for years,

doing slow, insidious damage. It is transmitted largely by sexual
intercourse. Gonorrhea in women is frequently a serious and even fatal
disease. It usually renders women incapable of having children, and its
treatment necessitates often the most serious operations. Gonorrhea of
the eyes, affecting especially newborn children, is one of the principal
causes of blindness. Gonorrhea may be transmitted to little girls
innocently from infected toilet seats, and is all but incurable. Gonorrhea,
wherever it occurs, is an obstinate, treacherous, and resistant disease,
one of the most serious of modern medical problems, and fully
deserves a place as the fourth great plague.
Chancroid is an infectious ulcer of the genitals, local in character, not
affecting the body as