Note EI — Chapter XXIV · MALE CHASTITY

The prevalence of syphilis is estimated at 18 per cent. of the adult population. Ruggles found in New York City, in the better class of families, one-third of the sons of adult age to be infected with syphilis. Syphilis causes about forty per cent. of all miscarriages. The mortality of syphilitic children is about sixty per cent. Syphilis is the only disease transmitted to the offspring in full virulence. Sixty to eighty per cent. of all infected children die before they are born, or come into the world with the mark of death upon them. The mortality of the children who have inherited syphilis from the father is about twenty-eight per cent., of those who have inherited it from the mother is over sixty per cent. A large number of those who survive childhood dies from hereditary syphilis between the ages of ten and twenty.