What Every Girl Should Know

by Margaret Sanger

The two venereal diseases which I will tell you something of here are those most commonly known to all—gonorrhoea and syphilis.

Gonorrhoea is an inflammation of the urethra (water passage) characterized by redness, swelling, smarting pain on the passing of water, and accompanied by thick purulent (poisonous) discharge, at first creamy in color, and later a greenish yellow. It is considered by the highest authorities as solely a sexual disease in adults, depending almost exclusively upon sexual intercourse as its mode of origin and infection. In children, however, it is not the rule, especially in infants and little girls, who can be infected by the hands of the mother or nurse being soiled with the discharge, also where the fresh discharge is on towels, toilets, etc. It starts an inflammation of the outer delicate parts but seldom enters the urethra.

In former days gonorrhoea was considered an ordinary catarrhal inflammation, “no worse than a bad cold,” the old saying went. It was thought to originate in women with the discharge at the end of the menstrual period, or leucorrhoea; in fact any secretions from the uterus, of an irritating character, were thought to be sources of gonorrhoea. However, with the discovery of the microbe “gonococcus”, in 1879, by Dr. Neisser, it is now an established fact that the disease comes from a source where there is either latent or chronic gonorrhoea, which, of course, means that the gonococcus is present. It is considered a conservative estimate that at least 50 per cent. of the adult population in this country have suffered from gonococcal infection. More men than women have been and are infected.

The first symptoms of the disease appear from three to seven days after infection, and under proper treatment the discharge may disappear in six or eight weeks.

If the man or woman places himself under the care of a specialist within forty-eight hours after infection, the disease is often of much shorter duration. When allowed to become chronic, it is called gleet. Too much emphasis cannot be put upon the danger of placing any one with this disease into the hands of the doctors who advertise so conspicuously, claiming rapid and complete cures for all sexual diseases. Experience has found that thousands of boys and young men, attracted by such alluring promises as only the quack can put forth, have been under such treatment, only to find later that the disease was allowed to remain in the tissues, the discharge only having been dried up. The germs were allowed to continue their work on up into the bladder, kidneys, joints, heart and even to the brain. The germs can live for years in the body hidden away in the gland ducts, the mucous membrane of the organ first attacked being in a normal state, yet when a condition arises when the vitality of the tissues in which the germs are lodged is lowered, or which gives the germs themselves more nourishment or stimulus, such as alcohol or excessive intercourse, they almost always become active again.

In women the small part of the womb (cervix), as well as the urethra, are favorite places of attack. When the disease attacks the cervix a woman may not be conscious of it, and so, unless prominent symptoms attend it, she may infect many persons in the meantime. In man, on the other hand, the disease cannot be present without his knowing there is something wrong, and it should be impressed upon him that it is a moral obligation on his part not to have sexual relations until he has been examined and pronounced cured by a specialist in genito-urinary diseases.

Your general practitioner will always recommend to you a specialist if you ask him to. When the disease attacks the uterus and ovaries it very often blocks the fallopian tubes and prevents the impregnation of the ovum. It is said that over one-third of the childless marriages are due to gonorrhoea in women, innocently contracted from their husbands. Both men and women can become sterile from this disease. The seminal tubes in the man become blocked, thus disabling him from impregnating the ovum.

Again, when the disease attacks the organs of generation, unless speedily attended to, the organs get into a chronic state of inflammation. The disease is, therefore, more difficult to reach, the chances of cure more difficult, and it usually means an operation for the woman.

The great mass of ailing women who trace their misery back to never seeing a well day since marriage, can be classed among those suffering with this disease, as can also that army of women whose illness is classed among “female disorders.”

A curious point to know is that a man may have a hidden or latent gonorrhoea, of which he is not aware, for it gives him no trouble, and may infect a clean, healthy woman during sexual relations, and she in turn, can infect him with the same disease, acting like a fresh infection, giving rise to pain and discomfort. The great majority of infections in women are contracted from men who believe themselves cured, being under the false impression that they are cured because the discharge has ceased.