A treatise on the venereal disease / by John Hunter ; with copious additions, by Philip Ricord ; translated and edited, with notes, by Freeman J. Bumstead.

  • John Hunter
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the venereal disease / by John Hunter ; with copious additions, by Philip Ricord ; translated and edited, with notes, by Freeman J. Bumstead. 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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    of an animal body is not capable of being irritated by its own matter; nor is it capable of being irritated beyond a certain time; and, there- fore, if fresh venereal matter were continued to be applied to the ure- thra of a man having a gonorrhoea, that it would go off just as soon as if no such application had been made, and get as soon well as if great pains had been taken to wash its own matter away. • The same reasoning holds good in chancres. I carry this idea still farther, and assert that the parts become less susceptible of the venereal irritation ; and that not only a gonorrhoea cannot be continued by the application of either its own or fresh matter, but that a man cannot get a fresh gonorrhoea, or a chancre, if he applies fresh venereal matter to the parts when the cure is nearly completed, and continues the application ever after, or at least at such intervals as are within the effect of habit. I can conceive that in time the parts may become so habituated to this application as to be insensible of it; for by a constant application the parts would never be allowed to forget this irritation, or rather never become unaccustomed to it; and there- fore this supply of fresh matter could not affect the parts so as to renew the disease till they first recovered their original and natural state, and then they would be capable of being affected again. * This opinion is not derived from theory only, but is founded on experience and observation. A man, immediately after having suffered a gonorrhoea, shall have frequent connections with women of the town, and that for years successively, without being infected; yet a fresh man shall contract it immediately from the very same woman ; and if the first-mentioned man were to be out of the habit of this irritation for some time, he then would be as easily infected as the other. Where this habit is not so strong as to prevent altogether the parts from being affected, still it will do it in part; and it is a strong proof of this that most people have their first gonorrhoea the most severe, and the suc- ceeding ones generally become milder and milder, till the danger of infection almost vanishes.1 matter be applied to a gonorrhoea! surface while it is healing, the disease will resume the acute stage ; and, in the same way, a fresh application of pus from a progressing chancre to another chancre which is about cicatrizing, will reproduce a virulent ulcer. In opposition to what Hunter says on the harmlessness of letting virulent pus remain on the ulcers which secrete it, and on the inutility of lotions and cleanliness, I would recall to mind the bad effects which are universally admitted to result from the reten- tion of simple pus in many abscesses, especially when the air penetrates into the sin- uses, where the pus stagnates ; and also the irritating properties which pus acquires by decomposition, and the changes brought about by putrefaction. I would especially insist on the greater ravages produced by chancres confined within a narrow prepuce, whose surface is constantly bathed with virulent matter ; and, above all, on what takes place in an inoculated pustule, which extends rapidly when it is not evacuated, or when the succeeding ulcer is allowed to cover itself with a crust which confines the pus. The comparison which Hunter makes between the poison of a viper and virulent pus, is not fair; there is all the difference between them that there is between physio- logical and morbid phenomena. The gall-bladder is not irritated by the bile, nor the bladder by the urine ; but if these fluids penetrate into the cellular tissue, they pro- duce grave results.—Ricord.] 1 Ricord.—Without repeating what I said above, I will add that, what Hunter regards as a general rule, is only an exception, which we shall consider hereafter. We find many more patients who complain of not being able to touch a woman without a re- turn of their disease, than we find in the opposite condition. Most men, who are pre-