Page:When You Go Home Take This Book With You.djvu/10

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Syphilis is curable if taken in time and the treatment continued long enough. It takes from one to three years to cure syphilis, and even then a man should continue to return for treatment from time to time to be on the safe side.

After a month's treatment a man may seem cured, but he is not, and he can give the disease to others.

Syphilis may keep coming back for a year or more. After each attack the symptoms may disappear even without much treatment. But the disease still lurks in his system, as may be shown by the Wassermann blood test.

A man who has syphilis should not marry before he has finished his full treatment and his doctor tell him he is cured. If he does marry before then he will probably give the disease to his wife, and, through her, to his children. If they are not born dead they will probably become cripples in mind or in body.

CHANCROID [Soft Chancre]

Chancroid is also a contagious venereal disease—a germ disease. It is not so dangerous as syphilis, since it does not get into the blood, but it may eat away the flesh and also cause buboes, or "blue balls."

The soft chancre, which is a sore on or near