The trial of Joseph Hodges for carnally abusing one Maranata Freestone, a girl under ten years of age, and sentenced to twenty years penal servitude / by Jonathan Wybrants.

  • Wybrants, Jonathan, 1818-1883.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The trial of Joseph Hodges for carnally abusing one Maranata Freestone, a girl under ten years of age, and sentenced to twenty years penal servitude / by Jonathan Wybrants. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    designated by tbe term vaginitis, for it is of a much more inflammatory character than either leucorrhoea or gonorrhoea—at least as these two diseases present in the adult female—and the discharge is much more profuse in the former and much more purulent in the latter. This discharge proceeds principally from the vagina, although the external parts are generally bathed with it, when we come to examine them, in the same way; as the surface of the glands and the inside of the prepus are usually covered with discharge in persons labouring under gonorrhoea, particularly where the foreskin is abundant. The redness and swelling of the labia, clitoris, and orifice of the vagina, is generally very great, and the hue of the former is somewhat purplish. Not being acquainted with the appearance of gonorrhoea in chil- dren under ten years of age, I cannot say whether the infiammatory symptoms are equal in appearance to those now described. The disease is, I believe, usually harmless in the first instance; and it is only when excoriation has taken place from the irritation of the discharge, and that the urine passing over the abraded surface produces some degree of soreness, that any com- plaint is made. After some time, (the period varying according to the viru- lence of the disease, and the state of cleanliness, or the contrary, in which the child is kept,) the discharge excoriates the labia, both on their external and internal surfaces, the fourchette, perineum, the margin of the anus, and all that portion of the integument of the thighs washed by the discharge, or which come in contact when moved one upon the other. In fat children, the amount and extent of excoriation, which presents much the character of an eczematous eruption, is always greater than in those who are thin, or have been, in any way, wasted by ill health. The character of this eruption, its defined margin and extent, may possibly, to a practised and unprejudiced eye, serve to distinguish this disease from the results, either of violence or the mechanical irritation produced by the friction of the penis between the thighs and external labia, as was endeavoured to be proved by the Crown in the late trials, in Green street. With respect to the discharge, it is generally of a very acrid nature, and is the cause of this excoriation and eruption, upon the true skin, and unless the disease has been discovered by accident in an earlier stage, (such as by observation of the child’s linen, or by the chance of some second party seeing the child,) the two circumstances which first attract attention are, the difficulty of walking, or the pain in making water, but the date of the discovery varies from a few days to several weeks, according to the violence of the affection, or the care and attention bestowed by mothers on their children. For the same reasons the duration of the disease will vary from a fortnight to six weeks or two months. The age at which this vaginitis is most frequent is, from four to ten, but it may appear earlier, of wliich an example was given in the /Association Medical Journal for Angust 27th, extracted from Dintsche Klinip, in which this disease appeared in a child only five months, and produced inflammation of ]yoi|»hatic& aud violeat coasbtutioaai symptoms.