ROCHESTER, MINN.
Ten years have now elapsed since Ehrlich announced the synthesis of arsphenamin and expressed his hopes for its therapeutic efficacy in syphilis in man based on its effect on the disease in the rabbit. The failure of the simple, experimentally determined rationale of the single dose cure, when applied to man, abruptly precipitated the use of the drug on a period of quasi-empiricism from which we are now slowly emerging. In fact, many valuable empiric rules of thumb which have marked our progress along the way of rationalization still survive. The one great solvent of therapeutic perplexities, time, has not yet had its full say on the ultimate values of the arsphenamin in syphilis. In frambesia, relapsing fever, rat-bite fever, and other less resistant spirilloses, the question is perhaps settled. But until a generation of syphilitic humanity, treated with arsphenamin, has been born, studied, died and passed through