Vaccinated mothers, living in an epidemic, may fail to develop the disease smallpox, and yet will give birth to children covered with pustules. This indicates that the mother's body is contaminated with the epidemic influence, or the infection could not be transmitted to the child. This also goes to show that, in all epidemic influences, those who do, not develop the tangible symptoms may be affected subjectively, having the disease in a subjective form, and how childish are all efforts at quarantine and immunization other than increasing resistance by raising the health standard.

So-called hereditary syphilis and tuberculosis are large subjects, the literature of which runs into tomes; but until the writers on these diseases shall know as much as high school boys, will know in a few years from now of the evils of bad habits in eating, clothing, and care of the mind and body generally, I shall not apologize to them for denouncing as rubbish their whole compilation on disease in general ,and syphilis in particular.

So long as wrong eating, wrong thinking, wrong care of the body--the use of tea, coffee, tobacco, and alcoholics-so long as the mind and body of our patients can be steeped in lasciviousness and sensuality, and all these disease-producing habits count for nothing with expert clinicians when they are weighing cause and effect to determine a correct diagnosis, why should I, or any other rational-minded physician, give any serious consideration to their conclusions as set forth in textbooks? Why are not their conclusions based on premises which have been robbed of their vital potency?

I charge the leading teachers of the profession of today with gross carelessness in making a diagnosis. They all know and acknowledge the evils of bad habits; but, in making a diagnosis, the effects of a vicious life are ignored entirely, and blood secretions, excretions, and pathological specimens are sent to bacteriologists, on whose findings a diagnosis is made and a cut-and-dried--specific--treatment is prescribed. The X-ray is used, and on its shadows is based a diagnosis, without a thought, or any consideration whatever, being given to the influence of the daily habits of the patient on causing the effects which the X-ray traces.

I have said that the pursuit of present-day diagnoses and treatment is a "fool's paradise." If it is not, why isn't it?

A life of lasciviousness and sensuality leads directly to degenerating diseases, such as tabes dorsalis; yet the leaders of the profession see nothing, think nothing, believe nothing, write nothing, and teach nothing, except that the disease is caused by syphilis and must be treated for syphilis, notwithstanding this treatment is a failure and they know it will fail. In the face of this, they would have laws passed to force their specific or anti-syphilitic treatment, and no other, at the pain of imprisonment for the culprit who would dare repudiate their damnable pessimism.

The treatment standardized by the inhabitants of this fool's paradise (medical) will necessarily make their cures (?) correspond with their pessimistic prognosis. Perhaps it would be better to say that the treatment is logical--in keeping with the erroneous etiology,

From a modem medical view-point, there is but one toxin that counts in analyzing syphilis, and that is the toxin of syphilis. The modem medical gentleman may dive down into the worst human muck, but if he cannot find syphilitic infection, or the least excuse for suspecting it, he will issue a clean bill-of-health, to be put in escrow for ninety-nine years. If at the end of that time a Wassermann test, used every year, has shown negative, a certificate declaring the victim pure will be delivered to him "to have and to hold" for the remainder of his natural lifetime.

A syphilitic suspect is held under surveillance, and tested often enough and long enough to develop in him a syphilophobia, after which he will stand without being tied to any syphilomaniac.

To the uninitiated what I say may appear to be exaggeration, or perhaps entirely false; but the truth is that I cannot exaggerate on the fallacious teachings of modern medical science on syphilis--they are so false that they are beyond belief. The reason why medical fallacy has evolved to such dimensions on the subject of syphilis is because it is backed by law and the small voice of truth is frowned down.

'The majority of doctors who subscribe to the fallacy have no opinions, but they stand up and are counted for any ridiculous theories advanced by the "scientific" heads. In this way the stupid, unthinking majority governs; and when ignorance rules, insane delusion often sets the pace. 'The most dangerous delusions are those that are accepted by the lay minds as scientific.

When parents live in such a manner as to keep themselves enervated to the point of having imperfect metabolism--the point of having secretions and excretions more or less inhibited; when their personal habits are sensual, and the state of the alimentary canal is that of acetous fermentation in the stomach, and putrefactive fermentation in the bowels, their physical state is that of chronic toxin poisoning.

Acetous fermentation in the stomach and upper part of the small intestine has an inhibiting effect on the dehydrating process that takes place in the walls of the stomach, duodenum or small intestine, and liver. In the lower small intestine and the large intestine putrefaction takes place, and the toxins absorbed from this depraved condition is a constant source of poisoning. The lymphatic system arrests the absorbed toxins, and neutralizes them to a certain extent; but the body's immunization eventually becomes so overworked that glandular inflammations become the rule rather than the exception. This is the state that in time evolves the tubercular diathesis, which is described elsewhere under the head of "Diatheses." And, in thinking of diathesis, it should not be forgotten that more is meant than an average susceptibility; indeed, it means a fated certainty that tuberculosis will develop if the same habits of body and mind are practiced by the offspring that were practiced by the parents in developing acid fermentation in the stomach and putrefactive fermentation in the bowels. Without this inherited tendency to develop tuberculosis, no amount of association with people sick of pulmonary tuberculosis will cause its development.