Syphilis and parasyphilis of the nervous system / by F.W. Mott.

  • Mott, F. W. (Frederick Walker), 1853-1926.
Date:
[1909?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Syphilis and parasyphilis of the nervous system / by F.W. Mott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    generally impossible to decompose li into all its constituents. Roughly speaking, we may say that it is made up of what a man is born with, what has happened after birth, and what will happen in the future to resist the action of the specific virus, which in the majority of instances is of lifelong duration. Most authorities agree that with the widespread syphilization of a race for many generations, the disease tends to assume a milder form; the effects of the disease are not so severe, and a widespread tendency to an inherited immunity has been brought about. The conversion of a rural into an urban population has done much towards racial syphilization and to the diffusion of a tendency to inherited immunity and the begetting thus of a mild form of the disease. But whereas there are fewer cases of severe syphilis than formerly, there are more cases of tabes and general paralysis. The interesting description given by Col. Lambkin^ of the syphilization of the natives of Uganda shows how severely a race previously free from this disease suffers from malignant skin, bone, and visceral disease. He also points out that parasyphilitic affections are rare, the reason being that the disease has not existed in the country for a sufficiently long time to allow of their frequent occurrence. If we consider some facts concerning congenital syphilis we must come to the conclusion that immunity is possible ; how otherwise can we explain the law of Profeta—viz., that the non-syphilitic child of a syphilitic mother does not acquire syphilis from the syphilized mother who suckles it V Again, the child may be syphilitic and the mother show no sign of syphilis; nevertheless the mother does not acquire syphilis by suckling that syphilitic child, whereas a wet nurse does. In the former case the foetus has acquired some antitoxin or something from the maternal blood which has stimulated its own tissues to react against the virus; in the latter (Colles’s law) the mother has derived from the blood of the syphilized child an antitoxin or something (not the living contagium) which has stimulated her tissues to react against the virus so effectively that she cannot be infected. There is no reason to suppose that the germ cells do not participate in this reaction, seeing that every cell in the body is subjected to the sensitizing influence of the chemical products of the virus by means of the blood and lymph. The histories I obtained in a large number of cases of juvenile general paralysis and cases of congenital syphilitic nervous disease revealed the fact that the mother very frequently had miscarriages, abortions, and typically syphilitic children without herself suffering at “ ByHtcm of Syphilis,” ii, pp. 33D-355.