Climbing the Matterhorn, however, is far safer for the majority who make that trip never suffer harm, while the impure man practically never escapes acquiring disease sooner or later. Let us, with our telescopes, observe the traveller on this ouch and dangerous journey, refusing to follow him until we see how the parties who take the trip appear at the other side.
A fine, healthy young man, fit to be a husband and father, heedlessly decides that he will take his chances of escaping disease. In a large number of instances he is bitten upon his first experimental trial, only to find himself a sacrificial sin offering on the altar of Venus, a mark for the shafts of ridicule from his "friends," and a shamefaced attendant at the doctor's office, remorseful and repentant, but nevertheless compelled to take this difficult journey in common with the coarse and the vulgar and the dissolute.
His punishment may be syphilis or chancroid, but let us suppose that he has acquired gonorrhoea.
After the impure intercourse there elapses the period of incubation, between the introduction of the virus into the body and the commencement of the disease. This incubation period, which is occupied in the maturation of the gonococci, may make itself evident at any time from two to fourteen days after the impure cohabitation, though it usually manifests itself in from three to five days.
The reason why this period of incubation varies is that some are naturally less susceptible than others, as we know to be the case in many diseases; that in some cases the gonococci are in such overwhelming numbers as to rapidly overpower the tissues, while in another case there may be comparatively few organisms; and, again, that the duration of the impure exposure modifies the time required for incubation, as does also the fact of the vital forces having or not having been rendered less resistive by too much alcoholic indulgence, or by any cause which influences the vulnerability of the tissues.
The gonococci are implanted during coitus either within the urethra or on the lips of the meatus. This being a favorable soil for their growth, they rapidly develop and spread up the canal of the urethra, partly by invasion and partly by capillary attraction.
The onset of gonorrhoea is usually accompanied by a series of mild general symptoms, i.e., the whole system ie affected, though the disease, except in rare cases, is a local one. The patient, at the beginning of the attack, suffers with chilliness, a rise of temperature, loss of appetite, and mental depression. Circles form under the eyes and the complexion becomes sallow.
Sleep is disturbed, partly on account of mental anguish, and partly by morbidly increased sexual desire with painful erections. Then during the next two weeks the gonorrheal process increases in severity, reaching its acme, in a typical case, in the third week, after which the symptoms decline, and at the end of five or six weeks the patient may no longer notice any indications, and may consider himself cured, though this is far from the actual fact unless the course of the disease has been modified by the most skilful treatment.
At the end of the period of incubation, i.e., usually from three to five days after the impure intercourse, certain prodromal symptoms are first noticed, such as a slight tickling sensation at the orifice of the urethra, reddening of the lips of the meatus, and the exudation of a tenacious, sticky, grayish fluid which glues its lips together. Sometimes these symptoms are severe, sometimes mild. Usually after the lapse of two or three days, during which this secretion is poured out, there is an intense burning sensation felt, which is worse on urination; this is called ardor urirwe.