In his discussion of a number of the "unsolved problems" of "syphilis" Parran reveals how little they know and how uncertain is everything connected with "the disease." He and others tell us one "attack" of "syphilis" does not confer immunity against "reinfection." This refers to the absurd medical notion that certain diseases confer immunity to future attacks. There is not an iota of evidence in favor of this ancient superstition and every physician knows this. Yet they all subscribe to it in the case of a few diseases, although they freely confess that most of the "infections" do not confer immunity. The whole of the vaccine and serum practice is based on this insane notion.

   There is considerable doubt about just when "the disease" is "infectious" and when it is not. Becker is sure that "late syphilitic lesions, even when ulcerative, are not infectious." Parran feels that, "best bet of all, from the public health point of view, the arsphenamines promptly render the syphilis patient noninfectious". He says, "studies of the Public Health Service, which are as yet incomplete, suggest that the seminal fluid of a syphilitic man is infectious several years after all open lesions have disappeared." Milk from a "syphilitic" woman is "infectious" unless she is under treatment. Everything is chaos.

   Certainly nothing can be certain so long as so many hundreds of pathological conditions, developing anywhere in the body, at any age of life, perhaps without any known source of "infection" and no preceding symptoms, or years after the first symptoms have been superseded by what looks like health, and symptoms have been forgotten, are collected together and called "syphilis."

   This prompts the question: What is "syphilis"? "Syphilis" is a weaving together of faith in a specific germ (formerly a mysterious poison), and a myriad of symptoms at all ages of life, plus a risk in branding possible children with "the disease" and the danger of infecting a loved one by a kiss, or by the use of comb, hair brush, drinking glass, or cooking utensil. Dr. Tilden says: "These beliefs cause nervous, imaginative people to build a living hell for themselves. To this hell of fear which is desperately enervating and ruinous to digestion and elimination, there is added the cursed drug habit, that cannot do less than further ruin digestion."

   He wisely says: "It is attempted to be shown by writers that a hard chancre requires twenty-five days to develop. This is purely arbitrary and fictitious; for the class of men who contract syphilis would have to be sent to jail and a guard set to keep them away from women twenty-five days. To charge a suspicious intercourse, indulged in twenty-five days before a chancre develops, with being the cause of its development, is as far fetched as to single out one of twenty-five drinks, in a drinking bout, as being the one that caused the drunkenness."

   Adenitis (swelling of the lymph glands adjacent to the chancre) is not uncommon. Every doctor sees patients with enlarged glands daily. They do not indicate syphilis. They may enlarge from a sore toe or from intestinal decomposition. They are not painful and may persist for months or years without the patient's knowledge. Who, then, asks Tilden, "is willing to say the glands were not enlarged before there was a chancre?" He is not.

   In the "second stage" there are said to be such symptoms as skin eruptions, headache, rheumatic pains, falling hair, mucous patches, iritis, etc. Just as there is often no chancre, so, frequently there is no "second stage." The "second stage" never presents all of the above symptoms.

   Skin lesions are due to drugs or to autointoxication. Dr. Alsaker says, "the skin and mucous lesions are built by mercury and not by the so-called syphilis." Mucous patches are frequently found in the mouths of people who have no venereal disease. Headache and rheumatoid pains may come from heavy eating and a sluggish portal circulation, or from deranged digestion due to fear and worry. Falling hair may be due to many causes. Alsaker says the falling hair is most often due to the "blood medicines." Iritis is often due to enervation from sexual excesses and to autointoxication. It is sometimes caused by alcohol.

   There is not a symptom in the whole group that cannot be had without a preceding chancre, there is not one in the group that always follows, and many times none of them follow, the chancre. Dr. Tilden says, "the worst forms of syphilitic skin diseases are a compound of ignorance, bedrooms without ventilation, dirty beds, filthy underwear, no bathing, and harsh eating, mixed with physical degeneration from sexual debauchery." Again he says "the diseases described as due to syphilis can, everyone, be accounted for when such causes as fear, drugs, errors in eating, overstimulation by coffee, tea, alcoholics and tobacco, and sexual abuse are considered."

   Because they persist in obscuring all diseases by drugs, medical men do not have any idea of the influence of sexual excesses, tobacco, alcoholics, food deficiencies, overeating of stimulating foods and other errors of life. Drugs not only mask symptoms, they produce symptoms of their own. Physicians, who day by day drug their patients, obscure the symptoms of disease by developing drug diseases. Much of "syphilis" is doctor made.

   Dr. Alsaker says, "doctors have been building pathology for years, and this has resulted in symptoms so numerous and fantastic that they even astonish and confuse those who build them." Because doctors are so expert at building pathology they do not know what "syphilis" is. Dr. Tilden asks: "How many physicians have watched a case of syphilis from its beginning to its end without giving a dose of drugs? Not one! Then what are their opinions worth? The first day a drug is given in any disease, that day the disease is masked — it ceases to be a natural disease — and no physician is wise enough to tell what symptoms are from drugs, what from food, and what symptoms belong to the disease proper. As absurd as this statement makes the situation, the best physicians in the world demand that their opinions be taken on a subject that is masked, and as obscure as the incoherent mutterings of delirium."

   "Syphilis" is said to pass through three stages — primary, secondary and tertiary. Between the second and third stages is a quiescent stage, which makes four stages in all. If the disease presents three stages, why do these three stages not develop? Patients cared for by natural methods do not develop any stages. Years ago Dr. Tilden, wrote: "Every one of these symptoms can be built without a chancre." Today the whole profession admits it. Indeed they now assert that the "third stage" may present the first evidence that the person has "syphilis." There is nothing uniform or regular about its development.

   Let us look at a few of the "third stage" developments of "syphilis." Gummy tumors seen in this "stage" are due to nutritional perversion and are not confined to "syphilis."

   "Syphilis" is accused of responsibility for much heart and arterial disease. Parran says the negro has blood vessels that "are particularly susceptible so that late syphilis brings with it crippling circulatory diseases." They have no means of determining in either whites or blacks when heart disease is due to "syphilis" and when due to other causes. It is all guess work. In the Journal of the American Medical Association, Nov. 29, 1930, Dr. James B. Herrick tells us that the classification and nomenclature of heart disease "is very unsatisfactory." He adds, "the condition diagnosed aortic regurgitation by one is called by another syphilis of the aorta and aortic valves; by a third aortic leak *** ," etc. The heart and aorta are affected by toxins of many kinds, including alcohol, tobacco, and arsenic, and it is impossible for the physician to tell that "syphilis" is affecting the heart.

   In the Journal of the American Medical Association, Oct. 2, 1937 (p. 1123), James E. Paullin, M.D., Professor of Clinical Medicine, Atlanta, Ga., says in an article on "Cardiovascular Syphilis," " *** In the detection of syphilitic aortitis, too much reliance must not be placed on the presence of a positive Wassermann reaction or on any other serologic test for syphilis. It is well known that from 10 to 20 percent of persons with latent cardiovascular syphilis will give a negative serologic reaction. *** A patient who has not had rheumatic heart disease, and does not have hypertension, but who does give a history of syphilitic infection and presents any three of the aforementioned symptoms or signs (symptoms that could apply to heart ailment from any cause), even in the absence of a positive Wassermann reaction, should receive the benefits (sic) of anti-syphilitic treatment."

   Parran says that "among primitive races, syphilis seems to result in more skin lesions than among present-day white races. Conversely, involvement of the nervous system seems more frequent with us." Again, Paresis is more frequent in the white than in the colored race; more frequent in the male than in the female, ("The whole course of syphilis seems milder in women."); more frequent among brain workers than among unskilled workers. On the other hand, Parran says that, due to the great pains to which nature has gone to protect the brain, "even with no treatment, this organism (the spirochete) passes the barrier, I should guess, in less than one case in three."

   Dementia paralytica, or general paralysis, also known as paresis and softening of the brain, is said to be due to "syphilis." The discovery of what are called "lesions of tertiary syphilis" in three cases of dementia paralytica led to the belief that "syphilis" is etiologically related to paresis. There followed work by several "investigators," until now, paresis is said to always be due to "syphilis" and never to anything else.

   It is true that in many cases there is no history of "syphilis" and in many cases the Wassermann and even the spinal test is negative. For instance, Becker says: "After the disease has been present for several years the blood test becomes negative in thirty percent of the cases, and in patients who have syphilis of the central nervous system up to forty percent of the blood tests are negative, although the spinal fluid may be strongly positive." Parran explains that for a long time after the nervous system becomes involved there may be no symptoms — "asymptomatic neuro-syphilis: found in one-half of the cases with a persistently positive blood Wassermann reaction. Even a negative Wassermann test is no insurance against trouble in the nervous system — nearly one-third of the patients with positive spinal fluid have it." Fox says: "Even the spinal examination may be negative."

   It is claimed that the spirochetes are found in the central nervous system of these patients. This is not always true and it has not been definitely shown that the spirochetes cause "syphilis." In addition to this, post-mortems are not made on all the cases. Nonetheless the dogma has gone forth: no syphilis, no paresis.

   In the Journal of the American Medical Association, March 6, 1936 (p. 806) an editorial discussion of "Syphilis and the Central Nervous System," says'"The question whether dementia paralytica and tabes are caused by the syphilitic toxin or by the direct action of spirochetes cannot be answered in the present state of our knowledge. There is no constant definite relationship between these neuro-syphilitic manifestations and the presence, number and distribution of the spirochetes in the tissues of the central nervous system."

   These facts are alone enough to cast doubts upon the dogma, but few if any medical men ever entertain such doubts. The editorial continues: "Nonne emphatically rejects the idea of specifically neurotropic spirochetes. Patients who develop syphilis from the same source commonly develop different types of the disease. It is not unusual in conjugal syphilis to see one partner develop dementia paralytica and the other tabes."

   Medical authorities claim that the incubation period of paresis is seven to ten years — occasionally two years or less. The editorial says that Nonne found "syphilitic areritis in one-third of the "early cases" in his material and that "cerebrospinal syphilis developed in about one half of them within the first three years. Acute syphilitic menengitis may be seen in a few months after the infection." Further on the editorial says: "Early menengitic symptoms are not necessarily an indication of later dementia paralytica or tabes. Brunsgaard states that normal cerebrospinal fluid in the early stage of the disease does not guarantee against later dementia paralytica or tabes. Nonne found that patients who exhibit signs of menengitis did not, as a rule, develop either tabes or dementia paralytica."

   The editor adds that "social status, alcoholism, trauma, cultural status and the constitutional type do not seem to play any part as predisposing etiologic factors. He repeats Nonne's guess that "the spirochetes may remain dormant in the organism of patients, both untreated and treated, and that these spirochetes may later become activated, invade the blood and cause lesions of the central nervous system." Neither Nonne, nor anyone else ventures a guess as to what renders them dormant or what activates them. The whole thing is a guess.

   The present propaganda emphasizes the need for early discovery and adequate treatment of "syphilis" to avoid the later development of tabes, paresis, etc. This plea is found in all literature intended for public consumption. The editorial above quoted is intended only for doctors and, therefore, does not have to hide the truth about the evil effects of this treatment and its failure to provide the protection they promise against, "neurosyphilis." It says: "Without in the least condemning the modern treatment of syphilis, the fact that it does not guarantee against dementia paralytica and tabes must be admitted on statistical evidence." When will the Parrans, Beckers, de Kruifs, Puseys, etc., develop enough honesty to tell the truth to the public? This editorial not only asserts the failure of "modern" treatment to prevent paresis and tabes, but points out that the treatment itself may help to cause these troubles. It says: "The question has been raised whether the antisyphilitic treatment itself was not a factor in the causation of late complications. A number of investigators state that in countries in which syphilis was treated poorly or not at all, and in which secondary and tertiary manifestations were common, the occurrence of tabes and dementia paralytica was rare."

   The comparative absence of such conditions in non-treated or "poorly treated" groups should have aroused suspicions about the correctness of the medical dogma that tabes and paresis are always due to syphilis and never to anything else, as well as to suspicions about the effects of arsenic and bismuth on the nervous system. But the editorial runs away from these suspicions and goes off on a tangent. It adds: "These observations gave rise to the notion that mild syphilis predisposes to tabes and dementia paralytica. In an analysis of 1,278 cases of dementia paralytica and 1,372 cases of tabes seen in the course of fifty years, Nonne finds that in 80 percent there were no secondary symptoms."

   Finally, the editorial says, "Brunsgaard reports the unique experience of the dermatologic clinic of the University of Oslo. Between 1891 and 1910, 2,181 patients suffering from primary and secondary syphilis were treated there on a hygienic constitutional regimen from which all available antisyphilitic remedies were excluded. Boeck, chief of the clinic, believed that the antisyphilitic remedies interfered with the regulating forces of the invaded organism and served to alter the course of the disease, thus leading to viscereal and neurosyphilitic complications. The analysis of this material shows that neurosyphilis developed in only 3.4 percent of the cases."

   Unless we assume that physicians of Norway know more about hygiene and hygienic care of patients than the physicians of America do, we will be forced to assume that these Norwegian patients received very poor hygienic care and that under a genuinely hygienic program, the results would have been vastly superior to what the report indicates.

   Meningo-vascular "syphilis" is a generalized inflammation with involvement of the optic nerve, resulting in loss of vision or blindness; and involvement of the eighth cranial or auditory nerve resulting in deafness. "Syphilis" is said to result in blindness in two chief ways: (1) by producing atrophy of the optic nerve, and (2) by producing in terstitial keratitis, a severe inflammation and subsequent clouding of the cornea. "Syphilis" is said to also often "attack" the iris, retina, motor nerves and ciliary body. "A visual defect occurs in practically every case of congenital syphilis."

   So-called "syphilitic blindness" and deafness presents the usual uncertainties — frequent absence of a history of syphilis; frequent negative serologic tests, etc. Keratitis may be caused by many things; optic atrophy is a frequent result of arsenical poisoning.

   "Syphilis" is claimed to affect the ears in much the same manner that it does the eyes and is held responsible for many cases of total or partial deafness. Otologists estimate that 80 percent of deafness is due to catarrh. Many things cause the other cases. That "syphilis" causes deafness is without foundation, except in medical imaginations.

   The Journal of the American Medical Association. Sept. 4, 1937 (p. 782) prints a discussion on "Syphilis and Blindness, "by Dr. Louis Lehrfeld, of Philadelphia. Dr. Lehrfeld discusses a statistical investigation made on 600 cases of "syphilitic optic atrophy" which had just been completed at the Wells Hospital in Philadelphia. He says: "The most important conclusion of the survey is that the present day treatment of syphilitic patients having optic nerve involvement is entirely unsatisfactory so far as improvement of vision is concerned." Although, he claims the survey showed that the untreated cases became blind in five years while the treated cases became blind in eight, he casts doubts upon this statement by saying: "The preponderance of syphilitic optic atrophy among the white patients compared with the negroes, in whom syphilis is five times more prevalent, may be a basis for suspecting that present methods of treatment may precipitate early optic atrophy, while those who are lax in receiving treatment, particularly negroes, are less likely to develop optic atrophy. *** the present method of using arsenicals must be revised if we wish to reduce the percentage of blindness from syphilitic optic atrophy."

   Elsewhere in this book we have presented evidence that arsenic produces optic atrophy. Dr. Lehrfeld's closing statement seems to refer to the same fact. What is needed, however, is not a revised method of using arsenic, but the complete cessation of its use. It is quite obvious that most of the pathology seen in so-called syphilis is doctor-made. Dr. Alsaker truly remarks: "The symptoms and pathology of syphilis described are not necessary, but they show what medical art can accomplish in building disease. If nature unaided produced the text-book pathology we would be forced to believe that chaos reigns supreme when syphilis is at the helm, but as most of the symptoms are protests by nature against meddlesome treatment such conclusions are not justified."

   He adds: "It would require great professional skill to develop such a case ideally, and by ideally I mean in a way to conform to text-book descriptions. People who are much broken in health from excesses and improper living can have many marked symptoms without being under medical advice, but it will fail to act as the text-books say it should."

   He thinks that: "Surely the medical profession should feel proud of its ability and power in creating so destructive a disease. By the aid of a few drugs they are able to conjure up conditions such as nature alone has never equalled, at least such as competent observers have never seen her equal in devilish grotesqueness when left to herself."

   In the same vein, Tilden says: "Since giving up drugs I have learned that all formidable symptoms known as constitutional syphilis are compounds of fear, wrong life and drugs, and are very easy to overcome when I can have the patient's help — when the patient is willing to give up bad habits and learn to live normally and naturally."

   "Syphilis" is a medical creation. It is medicine's contribution to civilization. The whole complex of symptoms and pathologies have been arbitrarily and artificially joined together by the syphilomaniacs of medicine and added to by their destructive treatment. "Syphilis" is doctor made and doctor perpetuated.

   This being the case, we do not need laws to compel everybody to submit to repeated testings and treatings, but we need laws to restrain syphilophobic physicians from filling our minds with groundless fears and our bodies with deadly drugs. We need a treatment that will cure the profession of its belief in "syphilis;" one that will eliminate syphilophobia from their puny minds. We need a treatment that will cure the profession of its paranoia, of its delusion that it is commissioned by God to care for the race of man. Perhaps the only way to rid the world of "syphilis" is to shoot all the physicians of the world.

   The American Journal of Syphilis (July 1929) carried a paper by Wm. C. Stoner, M.D., of St. Luke's Hospital, Cleveland, Ohio, in which he says: "Syphilis may be present without history of initial lesion or definite clinical manifestation; this is especially true in women. *** A negative Wassermann reaction does not necessarily rule out active syphilis which may include vascular (blood vessel) syphilis, neuro (nerve and brain) syphilis, or any other form of syphilis, therefore the test should be used only as one of the signs of syphilis. *** most so-called soft chancres are hard chancres and that a gonorrheal infection may obscure a coexisting syphilitic infection. *** the tendency in the so-called Wassermann test is to treat the test rather than the patient. *** a negative blood and negative cerebro-spinal fluid do not necessarily rule out cerebro-spinal syphilis."

   Dr. Stoner says that "the most astounding thing" that his study of 340 cases representing all walks of life — laborer to big business man, banker, professional man, and the socially elite — was "the presence of syphilis in the supposed truthful individual who has lived well and no history of previous manifestations is obtainable."

   If this does not represent a state of hopeless confusion, it is one of those "syphilitic brain storms" that syphilomaniac minds so frequently tell us of. One may have "syphilis" without ever having any clinical symptoms of it. Both the blood test and the spinal test may be negative. They know you have "syphilis" because, at forty you develop paresis or tabes. One may die at sixty or at eighty, of pneumonia, having lived all his life in utter ignorance of the fact that he contracted "syphilis" in his early teens when he innocently kissed the maid while mother was out. It is a mad man's dream — a nightmare, a humbug, a lie, a myth.

   There is no history of infection. The tests mean nothing. The cause is uncertain. The clinical symptoms, if present, are not specific. No physician living can tell that his patient has syphilis." I challenge the entire medical world to prove that there ever has been, or is now, in any part of the world, a single case of the disease called "syphilis," as defined and described by "medical science;" I challenge them to prove that the whole thing is not a clever fabrication which has deluded even its fabricators.