Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A treatise on the venereal disease / by John Hunter. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![[ *7 ] PART II. CHAPTER I. OF GONORRHOEA. WHEN an irritating matter of any kind is applied to a fecreting furface, it increafes that fecretion, and changes it from its natural ftate (whatever that may be) to fome other. This, in the prefent difeafe, is pus. When this takes place in the urethra, it is called a gonor- rhoea ; and as it arifes from the matter being applied to a non- cuticular furface, which naturally fecretes fome fluid, it is of no confequence in what part of the body this furface is; for, if in the anus, it will produce a fimilar difcharge there, and a fimilar effecl; on the infide of the mouth, nofe, eyes, and ears. It is conceived by fome, that gonorrhoeas may take place without the above-mentioned immediate caufe ; that is, that they may arife from the conftitution ; if fo, they muff be fimilar to what is fuppofed to be a venereal ophthalmia. But from the analogy of other venereal affections proceeding from the conftitution, I very much fufpecl the exiftence of either the one or the other ; for when the poifon is thrown upon tlie mouth, throat, or nofe, it produces ulcers, and not an in- creafed fecretion like a gonorrhoea. But wc never find an ulcer on the infide of the eye-lids in thofe ophthalmia: ; and gonorrhoeas in the urethra are too frequent to proceed from fuch a caufe. Till about the year 1753, it was generally fuppofed, that the matter from the urethia, in a gonorrhoea, arofe from an ulcer or ulcers in that paffage ; but from obfervation it was then proved that this was not the cafe. It may not be improper to give here a fhort hiftory of the difcovery that matter may be formed by inflammation without ulceration. In the winter of 1749, a child was brought into the room, ufed for diffeftion, in Covent Garden ; on opening o: whofe](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2113148x_0041.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
