Parran says to the man who has "syphilis" and is not caring for it, that he should re-read the sections of Shadow on the Land that tells what is likely to happen to him, and adds: "I hope it scares you half to death and into the office of the best doctor in town."

   Parran defends the creation of syphilophobia with the claim that "syphilophobia never killed anyone; never brought a handicapped child into the world; never infected an innocent person," "there would be those to add that it never made a neurotic of someone not neurotic to start with; and if the unfortunate someone must be afraid of something the fear of syphilis is a fear worth cherishing." He admits, however, that he is not a psychologist and this may account for his ignorance of the effects of worry, fear and apprehension.

   He says "there is a certain social usefulness in syphilophobia," "and although admittedly it will accentuate the discomfort of neurotics and may aggravate some already strained family relations," he has "been inclined to agree with those who believe that such cases ("syphilitic blindness," "syphilitic homicidal mania," etc.) should be widely publicized to develop mass fear, even panic, about syphilis."

   As I write this chapter the newspapers bring the account of one man being killed and another driven insane by fear caused by the eruptions of Mayon Volcano in Hawaii. Fear, no matter how produced, is devastating in its effects and any man who is pledged to the production of fear and panic in the public is a public enemy. Dr. Parran is a far worse enemy to the health of Americans than "syphilis."

   Here is the description of a young man's feelings when he was told by a doctor, who had just given him a test, that he had "syphilis:" "When a doctor told me I had the terrible disease that has been dreaded through all the centuries, I shuddered and turned cold and faint. I staggered back, then clutched the nearest chair for support. Everything swam before my eyes and the doctor's voice sounded far away.

   "It was awful! To go through life a living corpse! To see myself sink deeper and deeper into the abyss from whence there was no emerging. I recalled pictures I had seen, casts, showing various stages of the disease and illustrations in medical books, each a nightmare of repulsiveness. Then for this thing to fasten its foul fangs on me! I had always had an ambition to fill a place in the world, an overweening desire to be famous, to love and be loved, to be honored by my fellow men. And now to be condemned to be a walking charnel house — was terrible."

   It was terrible — I mean the state of mind the pronouncement created was terrible. The psychology that has been built up around the word "syphilis" is worse than any disease could ever be. It does not require a profound knowledge of psychology to know that such a state of mind would wreck the health of the strongest and most vigorous. All this fear, dread, apprehension, depression, etc., has been studiously cultivated for several centuries, but particularly during the past fifty years. It is a crime of the first magnitude against the minds of the race. The sensitive, self-respecting person, who is told he has "syphilis," walks around in a nightmare of horrors, if he does not commit suicide, as many do. Such a state of fear results in arteriosclerosis, locomotor ataxia, and other forms of disease peculiar to premature aging. Dr. Tilden says: "I have seen splendid men ruined for life because they knew their lives were ruined; not fewer than twenty-five to fifty first-class physicians had told them so in the preceding fifteen to twenty-five years."

   He says: "Victims of this psychical state get to be monomaniacs; they think of nothing else; they talk of nothing else; their opinions are reinforced by every doctor they meet. As fast as fear develops degeneration, it is pointed out as another proof of the ravages of syphilis and the truthfulness of the early diagnosis. A real diagnostician would rather have everyone of his victims die, those whom he has declared would, than to have them live, if by living they refute his prognosis. Pride in diagnosis has consigned millions to a living hell; for the doctor would rather be right than to have any patient get well who, he has said, could not get well."

   Dr. Weger says: "It may be of interest to mention that in our experience, seldom does locomotor ataxia complicate the third stage of syphilis in a saloon burn, a tramp, or persons of that type whose dissolute lives are free from worry and anxiety about ultimate consequences to themselves and to society. Professional colleagues with whom these conclusions have been discussed are also impressed with the infrequency of tertiary symptoms in the dissolute. This leads to the thought that the hypersensitiveness, brooding, melancholy, and depression developed by those who dread the possibility of having a humiliating circumstance in their lives advertised to the public through locomotor disability, may be a psychic factor of great importance from the standpoint of enervation. Mental anxiety and fear enervate, break down resistance, and often bring on the very condition that is most dreaded. What a potent factor worry is in causing physical ills to develop is not yet fully realized."

   A dentist saw his business failing and he worried much over the situation. Finally, he was forced to close his office. He developed a large variety of nervous symptoms, including chronic sleeplessness, mental depression, weakness, nervous indigestion, constipation and great loss of weight. After two years or more of enforced idleness and economic worries, he secured a position in the office of another dentist at a good salary. Almost over night a marked improvement occurred. Symptoms that had defied his physicians and had refused to yield to the care he had given himself, disappeared in three weeks and he was gaining weight. Happiness displaced his. former depression. Such are the effects of emotions upon the body.

   Dr. Royal S. Copeland, now United States Senator from New York and former Commissioner of Health of New York City, in describing the effects of a lecture (he once delivered before a women's meeting) on those present said:

   "As for the woman opposite me, she sat there as if she were frozen. Apparently she wasn't shocked; she wasn't horrified, she was beyond all that. She was paralyzed!"

   Fear does often paralyze, and this is what had paralyzed the woman opposite him. The doctor (?) had described to those women all the evils of syphilization, as practiced by the medical profession, and told them it was all due to a disease called "syphilis." He had scared them out of their wits. He had told them that the disease "ravages and wrecks constitutions, weakens the system, debilitates every vital force in man's body and leaves him in a condition that is likely to put him on the scrap heap while he is still young in years." That, it would seem, was crime enough for one day, but the doctor wasn't satisfied with this, so he told them that if they saw a young man in his twenties wracked with rheumatism, look out. He told them that if the terrible monster, "syphilis," could be slain, "the average length of human life would enormously extend." He compared the spread of the disease to the spread of a prairie fire, a totally false and misleading comparison, and declared that a blind man, racing a car down Main Street, is a safe citizen compared to the syphilitic. He referred to "syphilis" as the cause of locomotor ataxia, and gave Rudyard Kipling's "Love O'Women" as his authority.

   Holy horrors! Is it any wonder that poor woman was paralyzed? With a man who is supposed to know what he is talking about, standing there telling them such hair-raising ghost stories, and swearing, by all the gods of antiquity, that every word he uttered was law and gospel, who can blame that poor woman for "jumping to her feet hysterical and screaming" when he had finished. (Some doctor may have told her only a few days or weeks previous that she had "syphilis"), with his recitation from the medical chamber of horrors? The only wonder is that the whole house did not become hysterical and rush out of the house and head for the river.

   It is a crime, and an unpardonable offense against the integrity of the human mind and against human health, to deliberately fill the mind full of unfounded fears of this kind, and that for no other purpose than to bolster up the efforts of the poisoning, blistering, carving, electrocuting, serum squirting school of medicine to secure autocratic control over the health and lives of the nation.

   Copeland is a syphilomaniac. He does not hesitate to create fear of "syphilis" in the minds of others. It must be admitted that what he was telling them was true, only not in the way he told it, nor as he desired them to understand it. When there is added to sensuality and the frightful state of mind the pronouncement "syphilis" creates, the deadly and destructive drugs with which such patients are treated, there is formed an unholy trinity that cannot be excelled for deadliness. All the pathology the Senator-Doctor described to that audience of suggestible women, as being due to "syphilis," is built by drugs and the psychology of the disease. The little skin infection which is described as "primary syphilis" is wholly incapable of ever becoming anything else unless forced to do so by sensuality, fear and drugs. "Syphilis" is doctor made and never develops in those who are fortunate enough not to know what their trouble is. If they keep away from the poison dispensers and promulgators of fear, they are safe. This is amply demonstrated by the absence of the disease in so-called savage tribes.

   Thousands of unfortunate men and women are wrecking their minds and bodies with the fear, dread, apprehension and self-condemnation that are theirs because some doctor has told them they have syphilis. Others commit suicide. It has been my privilege and pleasure to rescue a few of these from this slough of despondency and restore them to health.

   I recall one woman who had been told she had "syphilis." She had contracted it from her husband. It preyed upon her mind. At times she would indulge in crying spells and thoughts of suicide. She had gone to a doctor because of an eczema-like eruption in the palm of one hand. The condition was plainly of nervous origin and showed up only when she was overworked or excited. A Wassermann test proved positive and she was pronounced "syphiltic." A merry-go-round of the usual treatment was then gone through but without ever changing the condition of her palm. Her health slowly declined until I had her to stop the drugging and relieved her mind of the fears and apprehensions caused by the thought that she had "syphilis." Her health improved immediately and the hand with it. She made a complete and permanent recovery.

   "Syphilis" becomes an obscession with suggestible persons. "Syphilitic obscession" is a particularly common evil. It is a fixed belief that the victim has "syphilis" and this causes him much suffering and keeps him running from doctor to doctor. Palm says of "syphilitic obscession" that "the symptoms of the disease are so varied and so typical of other ailments, that there is not a single person living who cannot find symptoms of syphilis in himself if he searches closely enough. Personally, I get scared everytime I find a "canker' sore in my own mouth. If I were to awaken some morning with a chest rash, I would probably pass out from fright."

   The probable intent of these last two statements is to scare people who have "canker sores" or "chest rashes" to the doctors for examinations and tests, and not to express how Palm really feels. He is a scaremonger.

   Palm pictures a man hearing something of "syphilis" and its symptoms, hurrying off to a library for a book, where he discovers that sore throats, rashes, and tired feeling are symptoms. He remembers that he "had a sore throat last winter," a "rash on his arm" two years ago, which he thought was poison ivy, and he becomes convinced that he has syphilis. Perhaps an occasional case of syphilophobia arises in this way, but the fact must not be overlooked that the medical profession creates most cases.

   The physician who makes a specialty of "syphilis" becomes so abscessed that he can see "syphilis" in the most innocent symptom. His syphilomania causes him to drive his patients and everyone he comes into contact with into syphilophobia. The Medical Profession of the present is driving the people insane.

   The whole of the modern so-called health education places the emphasis in the wrong place. Instead of placing the emphasis on health it is placed on disease. Fear is the weapon employed to drive people to the doctors. And fear has been employed more with relation to so-called "syphilis" than with any other disease, more even than with relation to cancer and tuberculosis. It is sought to create panic and hysteria rather than to build up a sane outlook on life. This is all wrong.

   Courage, not fear; hope, not despondency; cheer, not worry and forebodings — these are the mental elements of good health and of a sound mind. May we hope for a change from the present fear creating mis-called health education.