The Social Emergency | Page 9

male population
have had gonorrhea. The principal reason for this alarming distribution
among all classes of these infections and their steady increase is
ignorance and misunderstanding of physiological facts, particularly the
viciously false teaching of the street corner that sexual activity is a
physiological necessity.
These diseases would be arrested were there a widespread knowledge
of their disastrous effects. Although young men hear the mischievous
lie that "gonorrhea is no worse than a bad cold," thousands of them are
punished with sterility as a result of the disease. Nearly all the
neglected cases result in so-called 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