Medicine: 100,000 Syphilitic Children

There are more than 100,000 syphilitic children (under ten years) in the U.S. who have had the disease from birth. This shocking report came last week from two bureaus of the Federal Security Agency. Another fact from the report: 14,000 new cases of congenital syphilis are reported each year in the U.S.—about a third of them children of four or younger.

The report was the opening gun in a new campaign against syphilis in the U S The Public Health Service’s Division of Venereal Disease and the Children’s Bureau’s Division of Health Services will work together on the program.

Last week’s report concluded: “Any one of these children is a candidate for blindness, mental deficiency, physical deformity or premature death. Not one of them should have been born with syphilis. This is especially so now since penicillin … has been widely available in recent years …”