[R. S. Gwynn]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...492940,00.html

[Daniel Haar]

Sam, you've just proved Timothy Steele wrong. Writing in meter is, obviously, inherently misogynistic!

[Gail White]

The phenomenon of the man who infects his wife with syphilis without apparently suffering from it himself - or infecting other partners - also occurs, of course, in the life of Isak Dinesen. I never quite believed it was possible, but the Hardy story would seem to corroborate it.

[R. S. Gwynn]

Ibsen's Ghosts has always troubled me on this score. A man manages to infect his son (hereditarily) while skipping his wife. Does anyone know if this is possible?

[Toni Clark]

I don't think that's possible, Sam, though it was once believed to be.

It's possible for a woman to be syphilitic without seeming to have had the primary sore (it can develop in the interior of the vagina or on the cervix).

There's an article, by AM Silverstein and C. Ruggere, in the Spring issue of the medical journal, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, titled "Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle and the case of congenital syphilis."

I haven't read it and the journal doesn't offer free access, but here's the abstract:

In 1894, Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote "The Third Generation," a short story involving the transmission of congenital syphilis from generation to generation. Analysts of his writings have interpreted the pathogenetic mechanism involved in modern terms: infection of mother by father and then transplacental infection of the fetus. However, a review of the contemporary literature and the history of the concepts of congenital and "hereditary" syphilis demonstrates that the late 19th-century understanding of the process involved a Lamarckian transmission of paternal infection, via the sperm at the moment of conception. It was undoubtedly this concept that Doyle learned in medical school in the late 1870s and that provided the background to his story.