Furthermore, the microbes, which are the cause of gonorrhoea, are in some cases uncontrollable by remedies and become profusely scattered throughout the system, causing a constitutional infection accompanied by the most malignant and dangerous inflammations, such as "gonorrhoea rheumatism" the severest of all types of rheumatism and various other inflammations of joints, tendons, and fibrous tissues.
The lining membrane of the heart, the endocardium, sometimes shares in this virulent process, and grave forms of heart disease are in this way initiated; and further, the meninges, or membranous coverings of the brain and spinal cord, may be affected and cause serious and even fatal consequences, while the pernicious effects of the organisms may produce the most deleterious results also on the medulla oblongata, the kidneys, the pericardium, the large veins, etc.
Thus this disease of gonorrhoea, or "clap", which is regarded by unenlightened men as of little moment, is seen to be portentous in its possibilities, even to the extent of becoming a dangerous constitutional infection; though, as a rule, it remains localized at the area of its initial entrance, becoming less and less virulent by degrees, though never characterized by a single element that is not grave. These facts are a terra incognita to the laity; and even some doctors, who are behind the enlightenment of the times, make the mistake of regarding the disease as trivial, until a sad experience teaches them otherwise.
A very conservative authority1 says in his standard textbook:
"When we consider the vast range of pathological conditions which gonorrhoea may cause or lead to, we are certainly warranted in asserting that it is, taken as a whole, one of the most formidable and far-reaching infections by which the human race is attacked".
And Finger, a great German authority on gonorrhoea, says:
"Gonorrhoea of the male urethra is probably the most frequent disease with which the practical physician has to deal. With it he usually begins his early practice, and until the end it causes him many anxious hours. Frequent as is the disease, it is equally ungrateful as regards a positive and radical cure".
There is no doubt whatever that this accursed disease has been known ever since history began.
The fifteenth chapter of Leviticus is taken up with an evident description of this affection, and explicit directions are therein given for the regulation of those so infected with "unclean-ness" in their "issues"; and the literature of the ancient Greeks and Eomans, as recorded by Hippocrates, Herodotus, Pliny, Juvenal, Oelsus, Galen, and many others, contains numerous unmistakable references to it and its contagiousness.
In the Middle Ages it raged, and continues to this day to be, as Finger says above, "probably the most frequent disease with which the practical physician has to deal".
Within the past few years, i.e., the last two decades, there has been a complete and astonishing modification of the ideas which were formerly held regarding this disease and its dangers, due to the perfection of bacteriological science, with the result that it is now recognized as a social danger of the greatest malignity. Seemingly trifling in its initial stages, it nevertheless tends to remain localized in the genital tract, causing in many instances, sometimes slowly and haltingly, sometimes rapidly, an irreparable damage to the procreative organs, to the bladder and kidneys, to the eyes, the heart, the joints, and various other tissues of the body.