Even within the limits of the English army it is found In India (H. C. French, Syphilis in the Army, 1907) that venereal disease is ten times more frequent among British troops than among Native troops. Outside of national armies it is found, by admission to hospital and death rates, that the United States stands far away at the head for frequency of venereal disease, being followed by Great Britain, then France and Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Germany.
There is no dispute concerning the antiquity of gonorrhœa in the Old World as there is regarding syphilis. The disease was certainly known at a very remote period. Even Esarhaddon, the famous King of Assyria, referred to in the Old Testament, was treated by the priests for a disorder which, as described in the cuneiform documents of the time, could only have been gonorrhœa. The disease was also well known to the ancient Egyptians, and evidently common, for they recorded many prescriptions for its treatment (Oefele, "Gonorrhoe 1350 vor Christi Geburt," Monatshefte für Praktische Dermatologie, 1899, p. 260).
Cf. Memorandum by Sydney Stephenson, Report of Ophthalmia Neonatorum Committee, British Medical Journal, May 8, 1909.