Conjectural estimates of the prevalence of venereal disease in the United States bid fair shortly to be replaced by more accurate information on the basis of surveys conducted by the United States Public Health Service jointly with the American Social Hygiene Association. The results obtained from a survey of twenty-five communities with a population of almost 25,000,000 have just been summarized by Usilton.1 She arrives at the appalling conclusion that there are each year in this country 423,000 fresh infections with syphilis, the annual rate of attack being 3.46 per thousand of the population. If this figure is applied to the census reports of the numbers of the population of different age groups, it is easy to estimate that well over 10 per cent of the adults of the country are, or have at one time been, infected with syphilis.
Of the various methods for the control of