GONORRHOEA
MOEE diligence has, perhaps, been devoted to the study of Gonorrhoea, and especially to the discovery of its cause, than to almost any other disease; and one who gives to the subject the attention which it merits cannot fail to be moved with admiration at the toilsome laboratory work which has been directed to the elucidation of the many problems which it presents. The greater number of laymen, even those who are the most cultured and highly educated, have entirely erroneous ideas regarding its cause, nature and consequences little appreciating its extreme gravity and the terrible results which it may entail to the person who acquires it and to his future wife and children who receive it innocently.
One often hears of an otherwise intelligent person who is reported to have said that he thought no more of having a case of "clap" than a severe cold, but no one ever hears that remark from a patient in the height of the attack.
Showing the principal gonorrhoea infections.
The well informed physician knows that its consequences may be most disastrous to the health and happiness of the patient himself, even endangering life; and that it may bring into his home circle the doom of a partial or complete sterility, as well as the gloom of blindness, especially to his offspring. The germs of the disease usually invade the tissues of the genital zone, and may lie dormant in them for long periods of time, to recrudesce, or revive into activity, after any sexual excess, or debauch, or strain, or impairment of vitality of the tissues affected.
This serious ailment may remain slumbering for years, after an apparent cure, causing few or no symptoms which are appreciable to the infected sufferer, and then break out into a number of subacute attacks which are but recurrences of the original one.
In the male the disease very commonly causes a morbid contraction of the urethra, "stricture", which is always a source of distress and danger, often leading to fatal complications from bladder and kidney affections. More generally it causes painful conditions, such as abscesses and "swelled testicles", the latter of which is a fruitful source of sterility in men. Even the mildest case of gonorrhoea may be followed by any or all of the grave disorders.
In the female its effects are most horrible and appalling, leading, as in the male, to severe bladder and kidney inflammation, and in addition, owing to the anatomical differentiations of sex, to inflammations of the vagina and uterus, the formation of extensive pus collections in the Fallopian tubes and ovaries, and to peritonitis. The largest class of patients entering hospitals for the diseases of women, and requiring the severest operations known to surgery, come on account of the ravages of gonorrhoea it being by no means an unusual thing for women to die from its effects or to sink into a condition of incurable invalidism ; and, as a rule, they have acquired it innocently from their impure husbands, who are envenomed with "latent gonorrhoea".