A text-book on gonorrhea and its complications / by Georges Luys ; translated and edited by Arthur Forester.

  • Luys, Georges, 1870-1953
Date:
1913
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A text-book on gonorrhea and its complications / by Georges Luys ; translated and edited by Arthur Forester. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    have been handed down and enlarged by his pupils, we have the first scientific observation. ‘No disease,’ says Hippocrates, “ has more varied symptoms than strangury. [This is his term for acute gonorrhea, and perhaps also for | cystitis.] It is most commonly found in youths and in old men. In the latter it is always more rebellious, but nobody dies from it (De Locvs Affectis, c. xxix.). Its usual causes are renal suppuration, and inflam- mation of the bladder, urethra, rectum, and womb, constipation, and excessive indulgence in the pleasures of Venus. Hippocrates had dissected urethra affected with discharge, and had, no doubt, seen polypi, for he attributed the origin of the disease to tubercles and fleshy proliferations. He therefore taught, in accordance with his ideas on inflammation, that “those suffering from tubercles and carnosities in their pipe will get well by suppuration and the flow of pus’ —an unhappy idea which misled humanity for many centuries. All the great thinkers of those days took a keen interest in medicine, and allude to gonorrhea in their writings. Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, etc., were well acquainted with this disease, and Epicurus, the gay philosopher, suffered from it all his life. After having struggled for fourteen days against an attack of acute retention which he hoped to relieve by living in a bath, he put an end to his misery, which had been brought on by his numerous strictures, by committing suicide (Seneca, Letters 66 and 92). Celsus, who lived in the times of Augustus, was the first to attribute the discharge of gonorrhea to an ulceration of the urethra (De Medicina, lib. v.), and, influenced by Hippocrates’ teaching, he said that “ those whose urethra have become the seat of little tumours are restored to health as soon as the pus is evacuated from the canal.’ Celsus catheterized his patients, the women as well as the men, and gave descriptions of his instruments and of his modus operands. The beginning of the Second Century of our era is marked by two great names—Galen and Areteeus of Cappadocia. Galen is the inventor of the term “gonorrhea” (from yov7, semen, and fey, to flow), his opinion being that the disease was merely an involuntary loss of sperma, unaccompanied by erection. Aretzus, on the other hand, distinguished clearly between spermatorrhea and urethral discharges in his treatise De Signis et Causis Diuturnorum Morborum. In the chapter dealing with vesical affections, he speaks of a thick white discharge which accompanies acute cystitis. He describes this ailment at length, and attributes the sharpness of the pain to the peculiar anatomical formation of the bladder which he considers to be a “‘ flat nerve.” For the treatment of the discharge, he applied astringents to the bladder,