YAWS AND SYPHILIS

To the Editor:—  An article appeared in the Tropical Diseases Bulletin for November, 1933, entitled "Yaws and Syphilis: Two Diseases or One?" which, in all fairness, should have some editorial notice.Physicians in Great Britain have been fighting among themselves for a couple of centuries whether yaws and syphilis are or are not the same disease. A group of Americans, principally U. S. naval medical officers, have for years sustained the unity idea, but another group of writers is quoted extensively in Blacklock's article. Blacklock proves the proposition that yaws and syphilis are the same thing, but quotes the army writers.As one of many Americans who have sustained unity, I have myself published the following papers on this subject during the past twenty years:Butler, C. S.: The Application of Wassermann's Reaction to the Solution of the Etiology of Tropical Ulcerations (from the laboratory and native clinic of the