Household syphilis (syphilis oeconomica) : with observations on acquired syphilis in infants / by J.A. Nixon.

  • Nixon, John Alexander, 1874-1951.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Household syphilis (syphilis oeconomica) : with observations on acquired syphilis in infants / by J.A. Nixon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    age—and lastly the mother of these two children, a woman ■of 50- It is evident how in this instance children form the necessary channels of communication from one family to another. Adults are more liable to acquire syphilis accidentally or extra- genitally from children whom they fondle and kiss, than from other adults with whom their relations are less intimate. Lancereaux regarded the question as of serious import. Paracelsus5 pointed out the various modes of syphilitic contagion : “ Infectio triplici via, videlicet coitu, partu, tactu.” Charles Musitan6 relates the history of the nuns of Sorrento, who contracted syphilis from kissing a little girl who had been suckled by a syphilitic woman. Sydenham 7 remarks : “ Infants may take it from adults by the mere contact of the skin, as when they lie naked in the same bed with diseased persons.” And he adds less correctly : “ Adults, indeed, would not take it under such circumstances without impure coitus. Infants, however, having laxer flesh and finer skin, readily take the poison.” In former times and in other countries, where wet-nursing was more in vogue than in England, suckling was an important means of spreading syphilis. Ricordi,8 in 1863 at Cazorezzi, described a foundling affected with syphilis who caused the infection of twenty-three individuals. In the same year at Ubolda a foundling equally suffering from hereditary syphilis transmitted the disease to eighteen individuals. A third epidemic at Marcalle in 1864 proved fatal in sixteen cases. Portal8 relates that a kind of scrofulous epidemic prevailed at Montmorency amongst the children at nurse. The evil became so great there that the Government sent Moraud and Lassonne, who ascertained that most of the children were syphilitic. But few epidemics of this nature have been more striking than that described recently by J. F. Schamberg,9 where a single evening’s social entertainment was followed by “ eight •cases of lip-chancre, all transmitted from one individual by kissing games.”