THE BODY TYPE OF THE GENERAL PARALYTIC hbort iRotes anb Clinical Cases THE BODY TYPE OF THE GENERAL PARALYTIC BY

THAT the study of personality types initiated by Aristotle and Hippocrates was almost totally inhibited by the development of the germ theory of disease is nowhere shown more graphically than in the study of the reaction of the individual to the parasite of syphilis. Here is a disease the ubiquitous manifestations of which lend themselves to a consideration of the different types of subject afflicted at the different sites of selection. A particularly fruitful source of study should be that small percentage of the infected in whom the central nervous system is diseased. The theory of a neurotropic virus, a favourite preoccupation of the French school, has obtained little credence here. The increase in our knowledge of inherent immunities justifies our expressing the view that the infection of the central nervous system is at least as likely to be due to an innate susceptibility on the part of the individual as to a variability in the causative organism. Yet, while the responsible parasite, and the cytological changes it causes, have been studied so that the phenomena associated with them can be considered wel