unreasonable to ask why there should be so much agitation about it when
so little of it is in evidence. It takes a good deal out of the graphic
quality of the thing to say that most syphilis is concealed, that most
syphilitics, during a long period of their disease, are socially
presentable. Of course, when we hear that they may serve lunch to us,
collect our carfare, manicure our nails, dance with us most
enchantingly, or eat at our tables, it seems a little more real, but
still a little too much to believe. Conviction seems to require that we
see the damaged goods, the scars, the sores, the eaten bones, the
hobbling cripples, the maimed, the halt, and the blind. There is no
accurate estimate of its prevalence based on a census, because, as will
appear later, even an actual impulse to self-betrayal would not disclose
30 to 40 per cent of the victims of the disease. Approximately this
percentage would either have forgotten the trivial beginnings of it, or
with the germs of it still in their brains or the walls of their
arteries or other out-of-the-way corners of their bodies, would think
themselves free of the disease--long since "cured" and out of danger.

+How Much Syphilis is There?+--Our entire lack of a tangible idea of how
much syphilis there really is among us is, of course, due to the absence
of any form of registration or reporting of the disease to authorities
such as health officers, whose duty it is to collect such statistics,
and forms the principal argument in favor of dealing with syphilis
legally as a contagious disease. Such conceptions of its prevalence as
we have are based on individual opinions and data collected by men of
large experience.

+Earlier Estimates of the Prevalence of Syphilis.+--It is generally
conceded that there is more syphilis among men than women, although it
should not be forgotten that low figures in women may be due to some