A non-surgical treatise on diseases of the prostate gland and adnexa / by George Whitfield Overall.

  • Overall, George Whitfield
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A non-surgical treatise on diseases of the prostate gland and adnexa / by George Whitfield Overall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    and it is only in those cases where an abrasion of tissue in the genito-urinary tract ensues that the cocci themselves enter the circulation and are carried by the blood currents to remote parts of the body. When the latter occurs and the cocci are deposited within the joints, nerves, etc., they readily die, as it is a proven postulate that they cannot live outside of mucous surface; and the disintegration of their cadavers intensifies local metastasis. Taking either view, however, the question of vital im- portance is ]3ractically the same; which is, that the germs are concealed within the prostate, vesicles, or urethra, and if the gonococci can be destroyed in these organs, it stops the generation of toxins or destroys the germs themselves, as the case may be, and subverts their entering the sys- tem. Clinical experience has convinced me that both of these views are correct. However, the metastatic diseases are much more often the result of the toxins eliminated in the prostate, than due to the presence of the gonococci them- selves in the tissues. The latter condition rarely, if ever, exists unless there is some marked abrasion in the mucous lining of the urethra, prostate, or vesicles. Many observers have reported the discovery of diplococci resembling closely gonococci, and, too, that would decolor- ize by Gram's Method, and where cultures would produce a urethritis of three or four days' duration but not a true gonorrhea. The writer has noted many similar cases, from clinical observation, and has been thoroughly convinced that these germs are non-virulent gonococci, rendered sterile by their having remained dormant for so many years within the prostate or vesicles. During an acute exacerbation of prostatitis, causing ex- cessive discharge within the urethra, these latent cocci are swept along with the discharge knd at times set up a ure-
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