During the past few years at the St. Louis Children's Hospital it has been our custom to follow all cases of syphilis coming for treatment, and in addition to investigate the remainder of each patient's family in regard to the occurrence of syphilitic infection. In this paper some of the results of this familial study are given. There has been no selection of cases or families, other than that those records have been analyzed in cases in which the investigation was more or less complete.
Except in three instances of second marriages, and possibly one other, in the 100 families studied, the father was apparently the first infected. In the three second marriages the mother was apparently infected by her first husband.
SYPHILIS IN THE MOTHERS OF SYPHILITIC CHILDREN
Whether or not the mother of a syphilitic child is necessarily infected has been a much disputed point. In the families