LATENT SYPHILIS.

There are often expressions of surprise on the part of general practitioners when the neurologists insist on the possibility of syphilis running its course in absolute latency, and without giving any manifestations by which an ordinarily careless patient would be bound to recognize it. The general rule in the development of the disease is that patients are so anxious as to the possibility of its occurrence that they actually anticipate symptoms, and some of them at least become confident that they have the disease when it does not exist. There are too many cases on record now, however, of undoubted tertiary lesions of syphilis without any history of previous stages of the disease to leave any room for doubt that the disease may, exceptionally at least, run its earlier course without attracting the patient's attention. This is all the more important, since many of the supposed nervous sequelæ of the