In every case where a woman is infected with gonorrhoea she is in danger, not only of being rendered a permanent invalid and barren, but also of losing her life from peritonitis and septicaemia.
We shall ultimately see the ruin which is visited upon innocent women by husbands who years before had contracted a gonorrhoea from which they never were cured; for only those doctors who are skilled in microscopy and bacteriological technique are in any way competent to say whether the process is still latent or not. A case is far from cured when the discharge of pus is no longer visible, though all patients and many physicians rest content when this result is accomplished.
Gonorrhoea, being essentially a local disease due to definite micro-organisms, is "curable" at any stage, though it must be pointed out that the word "cure" is objectionable to many physicians in relation to almost all morbid processes, for a restitutio ad integrum, or restoration to the previous condition, is rarely attained. "Believed" is a better word than "cured", for the germs can indeed be destroyed, with perhaps little damage to the tissues; but in those instances where there are several fresh infections, each attack is modified in intensity and results by the fact that the tissues have been so impaired that the condition becomes more and more favorable for the formation of scar tissue. In other words, gonorrhoea alters the "state of receptivity" of the urethral mucous membrane so that it is rendered a favorable soil for the growth of other harmful organisms.
A majority of the cases, however, are "cured" in the ordinary acceptation of the term.
Venus was the Latin name for the "Goddess of Love", while the same doity was identified by the Greeks as Aphrodite, the patroness of lust. Her name is used in medicine for things relating to sexual love and intercourse; hence the terms venereal and aphrodisiac pertaining to love or
venery.
Venereal diseases are such as are intimately associated with the gratification of the sexual passion, and are gonorrhoea, chancroid, and syphilis; and of these gonorrhoea is the most distinctly venereal, since it is rarely acquired in any other way than by sexual intercourse, while the others frequently are.
Eicord, the great Parisian authority on venereal diseases, claimed that eight hundred out of every thousand men who lived in large cities had at some time in their lives suffered with gonorrhoea. Gonorrhoea, as previously stated, is probably the most frequent disease which requires treatment; and it stands near the top in the amount of harm it does to the human race.
In contradistinction to syphilis, it is essentially a local disease and does not taint the blood and thus transmit itself to one's posterity. We have said that the germs of the disease sometimes become scattered throughout the whole body, causing grave constitutional effects, and that the wife and child may be afflicted; but these facts must not mislead one into the error of regarding gonorrhoea as a disease which taints the blood.
The gonorrhceal infection is a typically virulent or venomous process, due to the growth of a minute vegetable organism the "gonococcus" of which we shall presently speak. Gonorrhoea can develop only by inoculation with these gonococci, which are usually conveyed in the mucous or purulent discharge from another infected person.
It is usually situated in the sexual organs of the male and female; the latter sex being the chief source of its transmission, while the male sex is more frequently infected the reason for this being that men are more frequently impure, and because a comparatively small proportion of woman. kind cater to the lewd passions of men.