SEX DISEASES
The sex diseases are the same in both sexes, whether developed by
direct or accidental infection. They are the greatest practical
argument in favor of continence, morality and marriage in the sex
relation.
GONORRHEA
Gonorrhea is a pus-discharging inflammation of the canal known as the
_urethra_, which passing through the entire length of the organ,
carries both the urine and the seminal fluid. It is caused by a
venereal bacillus, the _gonococcus_. Under favorable conditions and
with right treatment, gonorrhea may be cured, though violently
painful, in fourteen days. Often the inflammation extends, becomes
chronic and attacks other organs. This chronic gonorrhea often causes
permanent contraction of the urethra, which leads to the painful
retention of urine, catarrh of the bladder, and stone. Chronic
gonorrhea, too, often ends in death, especially if the kidneys are
attacked. A cured case of gonorrhea does not mean immunity from
further attacks. New infections are all the more easily acquired.
Gonorrhea has even more dangerous consequences in women than in men.
The _gonococcus_ bacilli infect all the inner female genital organs.
They cause frequent inflammations and lead to growths in the belly.
Women thus attacked usually are apt to be sterile; they suffer
agonies, and often become chronic invalids. The child born of a
gonorrheal mother, while passing through the infected genital organs,
comes to life with infected eyelids. This is _Blennorrhea_, which may
result in total blindness. Gonorrhea also causes inflammation of the
joints, gonorrheal rheumatism, testicular inflammations which may lead
to sterility. Some authorities claim that fully half the sterility in
women is caused by gonorrheal infection of the Fallopian tubes.
Gonorrheal infection of the eyes at birth is now prevented by first
washing them in a saturated solution of boric acid, then treating them
with a drop of weak silver solution.
SYPHILIS
Syphilis is a still more terrible venereal disease. It usually appears
first in small, hard sores, hard chancres, on the sexual parts or the
mouth. Then the syphilitic poison spreads throughout the whole body by
means of the blood. After a few weeks it breaks out on the face or
body. Its final cure is always questionable. Syphilis may lie dormant
for years, and then suddenly become active again. It breaks out in
sores on all parts of the body, often eats up the bone, destroys
internal organs, such as the liver, causes hardening of the lungs,
diseases of the blood vessels and eye diseases. Ulcers of the brain
and nerve paralysis often result from it. One of its most terrible
consequences is consumption of the spinal marrow and paralysis of the
brain, or paresis. The first slowly hardens and destroys the spinal
marrow, the second the brain. These diseases are only developed by
previous syphilitics. As a rule they occur from 5 to 20 years after
infection, usually 10 or 15 years after it. And they usually happen to
persons who believed themselves completely cured. Consumption of the
spinal marrow leads to death in the course of a few years of continual
torture. Paralysis of the brain turns the sufferer into a human ruin,
gradually extinguishing all mental and nervous functions, sentience,
movement, speech and intellect.
One danger of syphilis is the fact that its true nature may be
overlooked during the first period, because of the lack of pronounced
symptoms. Its early sores may easily be mistaken for some skin
affection. Mercury and other means are successful in doing away with
at least the more noticeable signs of syphilis during the first and
secondary stages. The modern medical treatment using mercury and
Salvarsan (606) in alternation, has been very successful. It is
claimed that by following it, syphilis may be totally cured if taken
in hand during the first stage. The sores developed during the first
two or three years of the disease are very infectious. In the case of
a chronic syphilis of three or four years' standing, the sores as a
rule are no longer infectious. It is possible, however, for a
syphilitic of this description to bring forth syphilitic children,
_without infecting his wife_. Such children either die at birth, or
later, of this congenital syphilis. They may also die of spinal
consumption or paresis between the ages of 10 and 20. The mortality of
all syphilitic children is very great. In most cases, however, healthy
children are born of the wedlock of _relatively cured_ syphilitics,
though they are often sterile. Young men who have had recourse to
prostitutes, often inoculate their wives with gonorrhea or syphilis,
and thus the plague is spread.
THE SOFT CHANCRE
The soft chancre is the third form of venereal disease (the hard
chancre being the first stage of syphilis). It is the least dangerous
of the venereal diseases, but unfortunately, relatively the one which
occurs most seldom. When not complicated with syphilis, it appears
locally. It is a larger or smaller sore feeding and growing on the
genital organs.
VENEREAL DISEASE AN ADVOCATE OF CONTINENCE
The most tragic consequence of all venereal disease is the part it
plays in the infection of innocent children, and innocent wives and
mothers. Often a pure and chaste woman is thus deprived in the most
cruel and brutal manner of the fruit of all her hopes and dreams of
happiness. Similarly, a young man may find himself hopelessly
condemned to a short life of pain and misery. He may also suffer from
the knowledge that he has ruined the lives of those dearest to him.
Venereal disease, syphilis in particular, emphasizes the _practical_
value of continence--quite aside from its moral one--in a manner which
cannot be ignored!