“3. Are not the children of parents thus affected unhealthy, scrofulous, subject to diseases of the eye, joints, etc.?
“Very respectfully,
“Isaac Townsend, Governor A. H.
“Doctor H. N. Whittelsey, Resident Physician, R. I.”
“Randall’s Island, Dec. 24, 1855.
“Isaac Townsend, Esq., President of the Board of Governors of the Alms-house.
“Dear Sir,—In regard to the interrogatories contained in your note of a recent date on the subject of hereditary syphilis, I have the honor to reply:
“1. Regarding its prevalence. It is a matter of record that nine tenths of all diseases treated in this hospital during the past five years have been of constitutional origin, and for the most part hereditary. These diseases assume a variety of forms, and involve nearly every structure of the body, terminating in cachexia, marasmus, phagedæna, etc., etc. The exact proportion which hereditary syphilis bears to this sum of constitutional depravity can not be stated with accuracy for the following reasons:
“Children are admitted to this institution between two and fifteen years of age, thus throwing out of the category infantile syphilis in all its forms; and except in few cases, showing none of its specific characteristics, having been modified by appropriate treatment, but manifests itself by general constitutional depravity, and determines a great variety of diseases, embracing nearly every form of skin disease, affection of the mucous membranes and their dependencies, diseases of the eye and ear, of the bones, especially of joints, etc., proving the prolific and lamentable source of many of the diseases incident to children of the class presented in this institution. Making, then, due allowance for its masked form, in which the consequences of inherited syphilis appear in this institution, together with the absence of the previous history both of patients and parents, it is believed an approximate estimate may be made of the part which this malady bears to the sum of constitutional disease. From the foregoing facts, and from careful observation during the past few years in this branch of the Alms-house Department, it appears that human degradation is the source of the stream of pollution supplying this hospital with disease; and farther, that of all the vices which make up the sum total of depravity, both moral and physical, prostitution and its consequences furnish the larger proportion.
“Here we have the sad picture presented of a large number of children doomed to an early grave, or to breathe out their miserable existence bearing a loathsome disease, carrying the penalties of vice of which they themselves are innocent, being a generation contaminated, and capable only of contaminating in turn.
“In the above sketch I have confined my statement to syphilis as manifested in the Nursery Hospital, where the average number of cases of disease treated is about two thousand. From this field is excluded every variety of the disease except the one, viz., constitutional syphilis affecting children after having been modified by treatment in the infant.