A treatise on venereal diseases / by A. Vidal (de Cassis) ; translated, with annotations, by George C. Blackman.
- Auguste Vidal de Cassis
- Date:
- 1874
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A treatise on venereal diseases / by A. Vidal (de Cassis) ; translated, with annotations, by George C. Blackman. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![the woman C. has not ceased to enjoy good liealtli; sTie lias had no new symptom of venereal disease ; has communicated nothing to the men with whom she has had connection, and yet she has infected every child which she has brought forth, M. Cazenave, who has also reported this case, notes a circum- stance which can leave no doubt as to the nature of the accidents under which these children labored, viz., the second child infected its nurse. \ The most striking fact in this part of the etiology, is that of the transmissibility of syphilis to the germ by the semen, that is, by a product of secretion; a fact admitted by a partisan of the Hun- terian school, which denies the syphilitic alteration of the products of secretion ! Another important fact is the following, also ad- mitted M. Eicord, viz.: the mother who escaped syphilitic infec- tion after copulation with an individual laboring under the vene- real diathesis, this same mother who remained sound after impreg- nation, may become infected from the foetus, the germ of which has been contaminated by the semen of the same individual.* Thus, by an interchange facilitated by the circulation existing between the mother and, the foetus, when the latter is syphilitic, it may communicate the disease to the mother, as may the mother to the foetus, when she herself is infected. I beg the reader to pon- der over this fact of the ovum contaminated by the father, the mo- ther remaining at first sound, and afterwards to consider the fact of this mother who receives the infection from the child she carries in utero^ which child likewise contaminates its nurse; I beg the reader to follow the virus in its course, and afterwards tell me if it is in accordance with these facts and their philosophy to assert that the virus, when once the primary accidents have been de- stroyed, is impotent when removed from the person infected; that when once admitted to the circulation it is no longer capable of being transmitted! There is still another question. Both parents being sound, and having never suffered from syphilis before the mother be- came impregnated, when pregnancy once exists, can the ovum become infected through the influence of the father alone, who may have contracted the disease during the pregnancy of the mother ? This point has not yet been determined. The nega- tive may reasonably be inferred, and it is supposed that for the contamination of the ovum, the mother must first become infected. [Mr. Porter, in the Lecture from which we have already quoted, relates a case {Dub. Med. Press, Feb. 17, 1847, p. 100) which would seem to settle this question in the affirmative. The child was be- gotten three months before the father contracted the disease, the mother was sound, with the exception of some spots of button scurvy, yet the child, when born, was syphilitic.—G. C, B.] 3. Influence of the nurse upon the child, and vice versa, and upon those who have their earliest care.—The new-born child may receive * Vid. Acton, q;;. cit.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21082340_0480.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
