It is said that almost 10 per cent. of the infections are contracted innocently, especially in European countries, where kissing and other forms of endearment are much indulged in. In this country it is not so common, but more women than men contract it innocently and in this manner.
In women, too, the first symptoms are not so characteristic as in men. She may pay no attention to the chancre for a month, even if she does feel aches in the bones, she thinks she is run down, or thinks she has malaria; even the rash does not alarm her, and often only repeated miscarriages will be the only symptoms she can remember of the early stages. She may continue for years before the disease reaches the third stage. This is not always so, for in every individual the disease differs in character and duration.
Gonorrhoea and syphilis differ in many ways. For instance, the former shows itself in a week or ten days after infection, where syphilis shows no signs for five or six weeks.
Gonorrhoea is considered a purely sexual disease, because infection takes place only in sexual relations (except where the germ gets into the eyes), while syphilis can be contracted in many other ways, through forks, spoons, glasses or cups, towels, sponges, bathtubs, toilets, pipes, dental and barbers' instruments, and kissing.
Gonorrhoea is considered a social danger because of its effect upon the sexual organs, often rendering them sterile. Syphilis is also a social danger, but it has direct effect upon the offspring, and upon future generations because its effects are visited upon the child.
Sixty to eighty per cent. of the syphilitic offspring die at birth or in early infancy. Someone has well said, “The greatest criminal is he who poisons the germ cells.”
In hereditary syphilis there is more difficulty in gathering facts, for the laws which control it are not so well understood, as yet.
There is no sore or chancre in hereditary syphilis, but other symptoms appear which every physician recognizes and of course attends to at birth.
Under proper treatment the danger of the father transmitting the disease to the child should cease in from two to five years, while the danger of the mother transmitting it to her offspring does not end at any definite time, for there have been mothers known to give birth to syphilitic offspring years after all disappearance of their own symptoms.
The strongest features of the disease transmitted to the offspring are the deformities which it imparts to the bones of the head as well as of the body.