This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal

I. OCCURRENCE IN NORMAL PERSONS

CHARLES F. MOHR, M.D.; JOSEPH EARLE MOORE, M.D.; HARRY EAGLE, M.D.

Arch Intern Med. 1941;68(5):898-912.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Opinion as to the specificity of serologic tests for syphilis, since their first introduction in 1906, has passed through two periods and is well on its way into a third. For the first ten to fifteen years it was generally thought that positive results might occur in relation to many diseases other than syphilis, and there is a vast literature reporting "false positive" reactions in cases of almost every known disease. In the following two decades the pendulum swung in the reverse direction. It was generally felt that, except for the results in yaws, leprosy, malaria, infectious mononucleosis and perhaps one or two other conditions, serologic tests for syphilis were amazingly specific. Technical errors excluded, when positive results were obtained either in the case of an apparently normal person or in the case of one with a clearly nonsyphilitic disease, these results were regularly assumed to be due to associated . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
BALTIMORE

From the Syphilis Division of the Medical Clinic, the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the United States Public Health Service.