SYPHILIS: A REVIEW OF THE RECENT LITERATURE

The material for this review was selected from publications which appeared during the last half of 1937 and the first half of 1938. As in previous reviews,¹ it has been necessary to exercise a rigid selection of material and largely to exclude the literature on experimental syphilis and on serologic studies.

HISTORY OF SYPHILIS  The effect of social custom and "mass morality" on the usage of words by authors is. well illustrated in Sir d'Arcy Power's² discussion of the use of the word pox in English literature. Shakespeare used it nineteen times, but later, during the Victorian era and for many years thereafter, it was taboo. There is no mention of venereal disease in the works of Thackeray or of Dickens.In an interesting article, the title of which contains the type of pun that would have amused Shakespeare, Stillians³ recounts the controversy between Ricord and Auzias-Turenne