According to Diday, Paracelsus (1529) was the first to plainly state the heredity of syphilis: "Fit morbus hereditarius et transit a patre ad filium."
Others attribute the original announcement to Augier Ferrier (1553), and it seems certain that he was first to specify the three modes of infection of the product of conception: "La semence du père, celle de la mère, et la contamination de la mère durant la grossesse."
Fallopius in a posthumous treatise on the Mal Français (1566) adds the authority of his name to this view: "Præterea videbitis puerulos nascentes ex foemina infecta, ut ferant peccata parentum, qui vedentur semi cocti."
Ambroise Paré also acquiesced in the theory, saying, "Souvent on voir sortir les petits enfants hors le ventré de leur mère, ayant ceste maladie, et tost après avoir plusieurs pustules sur leur corps; lesquels étant ainsi infectés, baillent la vérolle à autant de nourrices qui les allaictent."
Subsequently, Mauriceau, Boerhaave, and Astruc sustained the same view, which, with the single exception of Hunter, had no prominent antagonist.
It was not, however, until the eighteenth century that it was described with any attempt at detail or exactness by Rosenstein, and his essay is loaded with errors. It was in the foundling hospitals of Paris at the end of the last century, in the wards of Salpétrière and Bicêtre, and in the hospitals of Vaugirard and in the Capucin convents of the Rue Saint Jacques, where pregnant women and nurses attacked with syphilis were admitted, that methodical and trustworthy observations were made (1780-1810) by Colombier, Despenières, Doublet, Mahon, Cullerier, and Bertin. Since then the history of the disease has been the history of syphilis itself.
A full consideration of these, or even a recapitulation of the respective arguments pro and con, would far exceed the limits allotted to the present article, and we will confine ourselves simply to stating the questions which most nearly concern the practical physician, and the conclusions which the accumulated observation and experience of the profession seem to justify. The points bearing upon the general subject of hereditary syphilis which exercise an important influence upon advice or opinions of the utmost gravity as regards the happiness and well-being of the individual or family may be enumerated as follows:
1. Is syphilis in all its stages transmissible (a) to the wife or husband, (b) to the offspring? Or, in other words, is it ever proper to consent to the marriage of a person who has had syphilis? If so, under what circumstances?
2. By what means or through what channels can the disease of the parents reach the child?
3. What are the pathology and symptoms of hereditary syphilis?