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Article
May 1949

Racial Variations in Immunity to Syphilis: A Study of the Disease in the Chinese, and Negro Races

Arch Derm Syphilol. 1949;59(5):593. doi:10.1001/archderm.1949.01520300103017

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Abstract

The authors have presented an analytic comparison of three syphilitic groups, the white and Negro races of Baltimore, Md., and the Chinese race of Peiping, China. Their study led them to conclude that, regardless of sex or race, the disease is essentially the same in all people. Syphilis was found to be a less serious disease in the Chinese than in either white or Negro races. This is demonstrated by the frequency of latency. The proportion of latency in the Chinese male approached that in the white female.

Early in the disease, the Chinese were found to react more violently than the white or Negro races. Chinese males were fifteen times as often the subjects of skeletal lesions and twice as often the subjects of symptomatic meningeal lesions as white males. However, as the infection progressed into the later stages, the excess of neural localization in the Chinese male was

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