PARESIS IN THE NEGRO

Paresis has been so thoroughly and frequently discussed and is so well recognized by members of this Association, that it may seem like “Carrying coals to Newcastle” to offer another paper on the subject. Were it not for the fact that there seems to he an increase in its frequency among the negro race, I would hesitate to appear before you. By inference at least, if not actually, the negro has been included with those races in which syphilis is said to be very common and in which paresis is rarely found. There may have been a time when this was true, but I hope to show that at the present time paresis is more frequently found in the southern negro than in the white. Professor Kraepelin was the first to call attention to this increase in the frequency among negroes. In 1913 he said: “Paresis was a great rarity in North American negroes a few years ago, while now they are relatively more prone to the disease than the whites. An inquiry very kindly undertaken for me by Hoch in New York, concerning the patients of seven large North American insane hospitals, showed that the average rate for paresis was 11.2 per cent for men and 3 per cent for women, while among the negroes, it was 28 per cent for men and 8.i per cent for women.” Again this past winter he says, “Up to 40 years ago, general paralysis among American negroes was rare, but now the incidence of the disease is said to be as great among the negro as among the white population.” Dr. Adolf Meyer in a letter to the writer stated: “That in the southern negro paresis was probably very often unrecognized before the Wassermann reaction was introduced. Autopsies were