A treatise on syphilis in new-born children and infants at the breast / by P. Diday ; translated by G. Whitley ; with notes and an appendix by F.R. Sturgis.

  • Charles-Paul Diday
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on syphilis in new-born children and infants at the breast / by P. Diday ; translated by G. Whitley ; with notes and an appendix by F.R. Sturgis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    56/336 (page 36)
    Tins tlieory is further strongly confirmed by the instances in winch the same woman successively produces healthy or syphilitic children, according to tlie father she gives them. A woman 1 infected by lier husband had several pregnancies, which ali terminated, about the seventh or eighth month, in the expulsion of still-born children bearing évident marks of syphilis. One bom later, alive, died during the first year, syphilitic in the highest degree. Still later, she had a healthy female child by another man, although she herself was not cured of lier syphilis, and had had, during pregnancy, an enlargement of the tibia accompanied by pains which almost prevented lier from walking. Another woman,2 having had connection with a man affected wûth syphilis, had afterwarcl shown évident symptoms of this disease. She mar- ried another man, and had several healthy children by him. Having again met with her former paramour she became prégnant, and the child was born, this time, covered with a varioloid syphilitic éruption under which it sank. These two last-mentioned facts are proofs of the law which exempts from syphilis children one only of whose parents is suffering from that disease, and dooms them, on the contrary, to undergo it when both parents are affected with it. But they indisputably establish, above ail, this fact : that an individual affected with constitutional syphilis may beget a healthy child, provided that his influence lias been corrected, in the act of fecunda- tion, by that of a partner free from this diathesis. [The two last-mentioned facts show nothing of the kind. The first case merely proves that in the woman as in the man syphilis has a tendency to limitation beyond which the disease is not conveyed, having exhausted it- self. The second illustrâtes the fact that a woman may, during her period of repose from symptoms, during the time that the disease is latent, hâve children which show no signs of the disease. Besides, the history of the child is not satisfactory. Pray what is a varioloid syphilitic éruption ?— F. B. S.] The information conveyed by these examples still remains entirely to be utilized for the improvement of social sanitary science. What tempéra- ments, what constitutions, and what races are best adapted to correct the syphilitic diathesis in this respect ? By what sélections may marriages be effected in which the vitiated humors of the father may be neutralized by the physiological prépondérance of the mother, and vice versa ? Is there any relation, among the children to be born of such unions, betwTeen the sex of those who shall be exempt and that of the particular parent who is so ? Great questions, which we liave already weighed, and which we do not despair of being enabled to résumé sonie day, if more numerous facts should leacl us to any positive solutions. 1 Simon, Journ. des Connaiss. Médic.-Chirur., 1835, p. 257. 5 Ibid.