A treatise on the venereal disease / by John Hunter ; with an introduction and commentary by Joseph Adams, M.D.
- John Hunter
- Date:
- 1818
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A treatise on the venereal disease / by John Hunter ; with an introduction and commentary by Joseph Adams, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![sages had been cleared of the venereal matter by making water, the pure slime has flowed out of the end of the penis, on such occasions. When this matter is more in quantity than what lubricates the urethra, it is forced out of the orifice by the peri- staltic action of that canal, and appears externally*. The matter of gonorrhoea often changes its co- lour and consistence, which is owing to the dis- position of the parts which form it; sometimes from a white to a yellow, and often to a greenish colour. These changes depend on the increase or decrease of the inflammation, and not on the poi- sonous quality of the matter itself: for any irrita- tion on these parts, equal to that produced in a gonorrhoea, will produce the same appearances; and the changes in the colour of the matter are chiefly observable after it has been discharged upon a cloth and become dry. The appearance upon the cloth is of various hues ; in the middle the mat- ter is thicker or more in quantity, and it is there- fore generally of a deeper colour; the circum- ference is paler, because the watery or serous part of the matter has spread further, and at the outer edge of all it is darkest; this last appearance is owing to its being only water with a little slime, in which some of the tinge is suspended; which, when dry, gives a transparency to the part, that takes off from the white colour of the linen. It is very probable that there is a small extravasation of a red blood in all the cases where the matter deviates from the common colour, and to this the different tinges seem to be owing. As this matter * That the urethra has considerable powers of action, is evi- dent in a vast number of instances; and that action is principally from behind forwards. We find that a bougie may be worked out by the action of the urethra. This action, I believers often inverted, as in spasmodic stranguries [and also when bougies have been re- tracted into the urethra. A.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21060095_0120.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
