The Social Emergency | Page 9

ascending infections, reaching the bladder and kidneys and causing many deaths, and many men carry the infection in dormant form, to infect innocent wives in later years.
Appalling as are the consequences of gonorrheal infection in men, they are not so fatal or so far-reaching as syphilis. The causative parasite of this disease spares not a single tissue in the body and may disturb any or all of its functions, not even mentality escaping. As a cause of death it is extremely frequent. Our statistics ordinarily ascribe to syphilis but a small percentage of the deaths actually due to it; for instance, many of our cases of spinal disease, paralysis, arterial and other organic diseases are tabled under other names, although directly due to syphilis.
In women gonococcic infections are even more destructive than in men, as it is extremely common for the infection to extend to the tubes and to the peritoneal cavity, thus necessitating dangerous and mutilating operations, generally followed by sterility and often by death. Syphilis, though less frequent in women than in men, is nearly if not quite as fatal as in men, and otherwise similar in its baneful effects. I The child suffers the most tragic results of venereal infection, for it is always wholly innocent, yet infected to a greater or less extent, if the parents be syphilitic, and frequently if the birth-canal be gonorrheally infected. Although silver nitrate is a remedy for gonorrheal infection, if applied to the eyes immediately after birth, nevertheless the babe frequently suffers with infected eyes, and not infrequently with blindness.
If the child's sad infection is syphilis, instead of gonorrhea, there are still other miseries in store for it. If it is not so fortunate to be stillborn, it may have infection that ranges from almost imperceptible degrees to the most loathsome extent that it is possible for animal tissue to harbor. Its brain may be so invaded by the syphilitic parasites that it can never attain any degree of mentality; its spinal column maybe so involved that paralytic conditions will surely result; and if these nerve centers escape special involvement, other organs may be affected, such as the stomach, bowels, and liver; if these escape, the bones may be so deficient in vitality as to be incapable of sustaining the frame as development proceeds; the skin only may be involved, or the mucous membranes so affected as to make of the child a perpetual snuffler and inefficient breather. In most cases of lesser as well as greater mental defect, the tests show syphilitic infection. Endless are the complications that may be visited upon the innocent progeny of syphilitic antecedents.
The gonorrheal infections occur in the mucous membranes lining the cavities, especially those of the urethra and female genital tract. It is in these tissues that the germ of gonorrhea finds lodgment, and once there its development is hard to interrupt. Although the growth of the gonorrheal germ produces acute symptoms, such as discharge and pain, these pass off under treatment in a few weeks. Unfortunately the disease is far from cured, for the microbe has found its natural habitat in the inter-cellular structure of the genital mucus, from which it cannot readily be dislodged, and from which it may invade other tissues. It may remain in a state of latency for an indefinite time; then transferred to a new field, it may resume its original activities. While in this stage of latency it is difficult to destroy. At this time it is more likely to be further disseminated, as the patient, ignorant of the condition, is more likely to convey the disease, which so often occurs in married life after a long forgotten infection.
The gonococcus (the microbe of gonorrhea) is a pus--producing bacterium, occurring in pairs, resembling in form two coffee grains, generally with a distinct interval of separation. Although its natural habitat is the mucous membrane lining the genito-urinary tracts it may invade the muscular and serous and other tissues. If often affects the Fallopian tubes and ovaries and the serous lining of the pelvic and abdominal cavities. The deeper sub-mucous tissues of the uterus and the male genito-urinary tracts are also frequently involved, it being sometimes impossible to eradicate it from these deeper retreats. From these deeper tissues it is more commonly taken up by the circulation and deposited in distant parts, frequently in the joints. When it becomes thus systematically disseminated, the so-called secondary or metastatic lesions are almost as numerous, though not as virulent, as syphilitic infection. Recent pathological researchers have found that occasionally the gonococcus becomes the causative factor in inflammations of the muscles, tendons, and glands, and in inflammatory conditions of the lungs, kidneys, heart, and even the brain, spinal cord, and the serous membranes enveloping these great cranial and spinal viscera.
The individuality and characteristics