Gonorrhoea and urethritis / by G. Frank Lydston.

Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Gonorrhoea and urethritis / by G. Frank Lydston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    virgin urethra is most susceptible to urethritis. It is very rare, indeed, that a patient does not acknowledge that his first attack was the most severe of perhaps a large number of subsequent attacks. After a time the average man becomes case-hardened, and is much ■less likely to have urethritis of a virulent type. He is, to be sure, likely to have frequent attacks of so-called bastard clap, dependent upon a damaged condition of the canal, resulting from his first gonorrhoea, but it is rather exceptional that he experiences an attack of anything like the virulency of the one which initiated him in his venereal experience. There is something quite remarkable in the manner in which some cases of apparently virulent urethritis are contracted. A man, previously healthy and who has intercourse reg- ularly with his wife, indulges in illicit intercourse; in a few days pronounced urethritis develops and runs the usual course, or perhaps results in all the possible ■complications. On examining the person from whom the disease was contracted, we find no indications of gonorrhoea—leucorrhoea, however, being present in the majority of instances. Now, if the woman be a pros- titute, it is possible that the poison has been left with her in an adventure just previous to that with the un- lucky married man, and that she has escaped infec- tion on account of her extreme cleanliness or the toughness of her vaginal mucous membrane. If, however, she is not a professional prostitute, this is not so likely, and if she has leucorrhoea she could
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