Constitutional syphilis : being a practical illustration of the disease in its secondary and tertiary phases / by James George Beaney.

  • James Beaney
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Constitutional syphilis : being a practical illustration of the disease in its secondary and tertiary phases / by James George Beaney. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    440/528 (page 424)
    easy matter, unless lie be well versed in the pathology of syphilis, to make mistakes of a serious character, and inter- pret the circumstances of the case in such a way as to give rise to the most unjust recriminations, as well as severities of the most sacred nature. An instance of this is given by Dr. Porter in the following words:-But a very short time smce, a young friend of mine, being professionaUy con- sulted on the subject, answered that a female could not be infected save in the ordinary way, except she had conceived when she might be poisoned by her promised offspring; and as the person who had given occasion to tlie question was not in that condition, the opinion wrought an estrangement between her and her husband that has never since been cleared up. One such case occurring in a man's experience, and the untold miseries arising out of it, ought to be sufficient to prove the necessity of practically determining the point; for supposing this young surgeon's opinion to have been, as I believe it luas, decidedly torong* he wiU have been, most unintentionally on his part, the cause of an accumulation of suffering too painful even to reflect on. Cases like this may occur in tlie practice of any one at some time or other; hence the importance of close attention to the study of syphilitic phenomena, and caution in pro- nouncing an opinion as to the mode of contagion. The same eminent writer remarks—I have observed enough of these cases to establish as a laiu of syphilis, that the semen of a diseased man, deposited in the vagina of a healthy looman, tuill, by being absorbed, and tvithout the intervention of p)regnancy, contaminate that tooman tuith the secondary form of the disease, and that xoithout the presence of a chancre or any open sore either on the man or the tvoman! * The husband was free from any phenomenal indication, the semen alone being the vehicle of contagion.