"There is no doubt whatever that syphilis is on the increase in London, judging from hospital work alone," says Pernet (British Medical Journal, March 30, 1907). Syphilis was evidently very prevalent, however, a century or two ago, and there is no ground for asserting positively that it is more prevalent to-day.
See, e.g., A. Neisser, Die experimentelle Syphilisforschung, 1906, and E. Hoffmann (who was associated with Schaudinn's discovery), Die Aetiologie der Syphilis, 1906; D'Arcy Power, A System of Syphilis, 1908, etc.; F. W. Mott, "Pathology of Syphilis in the Light of Modern Research," British Medical Journal, February 20, 1909; also, Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, vol. iv, 1909.
There is some difference of opinion on this point, and though it seems probable that early and thorough treatment usually cures the disease in a few years and renders further complications highly improbable, it is not possible, even under the most favorable circumstances, to speak with absolute certainty as to the future.
"That syphilis has been, and is, one of the chief causes of physical degeneration in England cannot be denied, and it is a fact that is acknowledged on all sides," writes Lieutenant-Colonel Lambkin, the medical officer in command of the London Military Hospital for Venereal Diseases. "To grapple with the treatment of syphilis among the civil population of England ought to be the chief object of those interested in that most burning question, the physical degeneration of our race" (British Medical Journal, August 19, 1905).