[Profession and origin of patients with neurosyphilitic diseases in a psychiatric hospital over a 50-year period].

Through informations obtained at the statistical and medical register service, it was done a descriptive study of some epidemiological aspects of neurosyphilis and general progressive paralysis at the Juliano Moreira Hospital, Bahia, Brasil, in a period of 50 years (1930-1979). For this purpose medical dossiers, obituaries, ingoing and outgoing register books, the census and nosocomial bulletin were referred. The distribution of disease was analysed comparing profession and origin according to sex, diagnosis, decade and time before and after penicillin therapy. The results allowed us to conclude that: a) The professions that we found more frequently were: formers, merchants, housewives, stoneworkers, public officials, tailors, soldiers, shoemakers, laborer workers; b) During the periods of war, we observed an increase in the number of ill soldiers; c) Patients coming from the urban zone were more frequently affected by the disease.