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There are certain vulgar prejudices relative to the physical condition of the subject of syphilis, whose influence is not without effect in the minds of many physicians. The difficulty, indeed, which even the most expert must at times encounter, in determining the exact nature of certain definitely evolved skin symptoms in such cases, needs no comment. It is a difficulty only too readily evaded by establishing a diagnosis of syphilis, and there abandoning all further ætiological question. The popular and pseudoscientific reasoning upon this point, traverses the entire field of clinical medicine. It is sufficiently common to read that the reporter of this or that history, suspecting that there was “a syphilitic element in the case,” did thus and so. The idea is prevalent that a mischievous, anomalous, capricious or remarkable change of symptoms, is due to the influence of a single one operating coincidently with several disease-factors; and that