usually is--a change in character! The man hitherto kind and
gentle becomes irritable, perhaps even brutal. One whose sex
morals have been of the most conventional kind, a loyal husband,
suddenly becomes a profligate, reckless and debauched, perhaps
even perverted. The man of firm purposes and indefatigable
industry may lose his grip upon the ambitions and strivings of
his lifetime and become an inert slacker, to the amazement of his
associates. Many a fine character, many a splendid mind, has
reached a lofty height and then crumbled before the assaults of
this disease upon the brain. Philosopher, poet, artist,
statesman, captain of industry, handicraftsman, peasant,
courtesan and housewife,--all are lowered to the same level of
dementia and destroyed character by the consequences of the
thickened meninges, the altered blood vessels and the injured
nerve cells.

Now and then one is fortunate enough to treat with success an
early case of General Paresis. And then the reversed miracle
takes place, unfortunately too rarely! The disordered mind, the
altered character, leaps upward to its old place,--after being
dosed by the marvelous drug Salvarsan, created by the German
Jewish scientist, Paul Ehrlich.

Of extraordinary interest are the rare cases of loss of personal
identity seen after brain injury, say in war. A man is knocked
unconscious by a blow and upon restoration of consciousness is
separated from that past in which his ego resides. He does not
know his history or his name, and that continuity of the "self"
so deeply prized and held by all religions to be part of his
immortality is gone. Then after a little while, a few days or