The main source of gonorrhoea is coitus with a woman so affected, and it is a conditio sine qua non that one individual can contract the disease only from another who has the malady.
Gonorrhoea is termed by physicians a "specific urethritis", by which is meant a virulent or poisonous inflammation of the urethra, in contradistinction to the "simple urethritis", which is an inflammatory condition simulating the specific form, but comparatively trivial. Not every case of urethritis, or inflammation in the urethra, is gonorrhoea. Thus, a man may have a urethritis develop after a pure intercourse with his wife, if she has an acrid dis The termination itis is used by pathologists to signify an inflammation of any organ to the name of which it is suffixed.
charge or is menstruating, but it is nonsense to believe that one can contract gonorrhoea from another person who has not gonorrhoea.
As explanatory of the above a case recently came to the notice of the author, where a respectable and pure man married and took a wedding trip of several weeks' duration. Upon reaching Washington he applied for medical advice in an agony of mind, saying that he had an inflammation in the urethra, and believing that he had acquired gonorrhoea from his wife, for he had been with no other woman.
The case was satisfactorily cleared up by the diagnosis, aided by the microscope, which made it possible to assure him that he was suffering from a "simple" or "non-infective urethritis", and not from gonorrhoea. The man then acknowledged that he had insisted on intercourse with his wife, a few days before, in spite of her disapproval and warning that she was menstruating. The above case is mentioned in order to allow no married man to wrongfully blame his wife if he chance to get some of her irritating and acrid discharges into his urethra. She and he are then both blameless in their constancy, and the affair is trivial. This "simple urethritis" is not severe and is no worse than a "cold in the head".
Gonorrhoea is what is called a "specific disease", i.e., it is produced by a special or distinctly determined cause, the gonococcus, which has distinctive characteristics of its own. The term is derived from two Greek words yovo, "semen", and "i'ii", to "flow", but its etymology is erroneous and the word is pardonable only on account of its antiquity.
The gonorrhceal process may attack any mucous or serous surface; for instance the mucous membrane of the urethra, vagina, uterus, eye, mouth, nose, ear, anus, but of course it usually attacks the urethra in the male, and in the female the urethra, vagina, uterus, Fallopian tubes, ovaries and peritoneum.
The chronic form of gonorrhoea, which may last for months or years, is termed "gleet". This word, however, is rarely employed in scientific phraseology.
Gonorrhoea of course may attack individuals of either sex at any period of life from infancy to extreme old age, if any of the poisonous substance is planted on a mucous membrane in any way whatsoever.
Except in rare instances, which are either accidental, or unnatural, accursed and execrable, one sex derives it from the other.
It may be, and often is, carried by the fingers, or soiled linen, or towels, and then usually affects the mucous membrane of the eye; but in the vast majority of cases it is contracted by direct infection during impure intercourse.
The most dangerous women are those who are most exposed to the acquisition of the disease by the bestowal of their favors on the greatest number of men, and those who practise prostitution clandestinely.
Disgusting as it is, the reader must share in the knowledge held by the profession of the depths of infamy to which the unbridled gratification of the sexual instinct may lead. Gonorrhoea of the mouth is occasionally contracted by the beastly and unnatural perversion of buccal intercourse, but the cases, of which there are not a few, are too loathsome to dwell upon.