During the past year we have treated with salvarsan eighteen children who were suffering from congenital syphilis. Our results as regards the Wassermann reaction were so surprising to ourselves that we searched the literature to ascertain the results of others and found so few reports controlled by the laboratory test that we think it worth while to report our cases.
Although the literature on salvarsan treatment is now enormous, very little work has been reported on its use in congenital syphilis. Among British writers, McDonagh1 reports a case, aged 15 years, with disappearance of clinical signs, but with the Wassermann reaction positive after one dose. Sequeira2 reports one case, also aged 15 years, in which he gave four doses of salvarsan intramuscularly; the remainder of his congenital cases were infants. In his cases the symptoms disappeared, but the reaction remained positive. He seldom gave more than one dose.