evident. There is still good reason for avoiding the effects of syphilis
by every means at our disposal--by avoiding syphilis itself in the first
place, and by early recognition of the disease and efficient treatment,
in the second.

+Late Syphilis of the Nervous System--Locomotor Ataxia.+--The ways in
which late syphilis can attack the nervous system form the real terrors
of the disease to most people. Locomotor ataxia and general paralysis of
the insane (or softening of the brain) are the best known to the laity,
_though only two of many ways in which syphilis can attack the nervous
system_. Though their relation to the disease was long suspected, the
final touch of proof came only as recently as 1913, when Noguchi and
Moore, of the Rockefeller Institute, found the germs of the disease in
the spinal cords of patients who had died of locomotor ataxia, and in
the brains of those who had died of paresis. The way in which the damage
is done can scarcely be explained in ordinary terms, but, as in all late
syphilis, a certain amount of the damage once done is beyond repair.
Locomotor ataxia begins to affect the lower part of the spinal cord
first, so that the earliest symptoms often come from the legs and from
the bladder and rectum, whose nerves are injured. Other parts higher up
may be affected, and changes resulting in total blindness and deafness
not infrequently occur. Through the nervous system, various organs,
especially the stomach, may be seriously affected, and excruciating
attacks of pain with unmanageable attacks of vomiting (gastric crises)
are apt to follow. This does not, of course, mean that all pain in the
stomach with vomiting means locomotor ataxia. All sorts of obscure
symptoms may develop in this disease, but the signs in the eyes and
elsewhere are such that a decision as to what is the matter can usually
be made without considering how the patient feels, and by evidence which
is beyond his control.