Malaria vs. Paresis

Announcements were made from Copenhagen and Washington of remarkable improvement in cases of general paresis (a degenerative disease of the brain, usually fatal, and caused by syphilis in the central nervous system) by the introduction of Plasmodium vivax, the germ of tertian malaria. Authorities in a Danish insane asylum have been experimenting with the method for five years and claim to have obtained absolute cures.

Dr. William A. White, well-known American psychoanalyst, and superintendent of St. Elizabeth's Hospital, the government institution for mental diseases, under whose care the Washington experiments have been made, is less sanguine, but believes that there is considerable hope from the malaria treatment.

Practically all efforts to attack paresis hitherto have been frustrated because antisyphilitic drugs, usually mercury or arsenic compounds, cannot pass through the choroid plexus, a sort of fine filter at the base of the brain. The germs which reach the higher centers are free to develop and soon do permanent damage to the brain tissue.