At a lecture given by a well-known physician in this city last winter, the physician advised every girl whose sweetheart, lover or expected husband had a history of inflammatory rheumatism of the joints, back of him, that as she values her life and future health, not to marry that man without a thorough examination by a specialist in these diseases. He declared: No young man should have inflammatory rheumatism. This statement is considered somewhat exaggerated by some making more recent investigations, yet all seem to agree that a very large majority of cases of inflammatory rheumatism of the joints have the gonococcus present.
If the woman is not made sterile by the disease and is able to carry the child to full term labor, then there is another danger of infecting the child's eyes during the process of labor, when the secretions lodge themselves into the delicate membrane of the eyes. Then, unless quick action is applied, the sight of both eyes can be lost. Over 80 per cent. of blindness in babies is due to this germ. It can be carried into the eyes of both children and adults by any means which can carry the discharge to the eyes. Upon the slightest suspicion that this has been done, medical aid should be summoned at once.
There is one fortunate thing to know, that the germ cannot live for a great length of time outside its natural or proper environment, though it can for years be hidden in the body. It dries up very quickly, and special solutions of both bichloride and permanganate of potash will kill the germs with which the solution comes in contact. There is but one course to follow, that upon any of the symptoms mentioned above, go at once to a reliable physician and follow his instructions closely. And remember that the causes which retard recovery are alcoholic drinks, lack of rest, spicy food and sexual excitement. It is said there is no positive proof against this disease, except continency until marriage and then monogamy.
A story is told of a young Irish physician, who, being asked how he treated gonorrhoea, replied most tersely, “with contimpt.” That this was for a time a general feeling is agreed, but with the knowledge that so many persons, especially women, contract the disease, under the moral, as well as legal, conditions of present society, the feeling has changed. A woman is infected by her husband after the marriage is sanctioned by the state and blessed by the church, neither taking the interest in the woman's future to guarantee to her a clean individual as a husband. Prostitution has been upheld and women segregated for man's sexual use, the government going to the extent of authorizing examinations of the women for venereal diseases to insure man's safety from these diseases. Yet there has been no such protection given either the woman prostitute or the wife that the man's body is free from them. On the other hand, every means to keep a married woman in ignorance of the source of her infection is made by the church, state and society in general. Every law to protect the man's crime is made for his use, while women remain unprotected victims of his guilt. And this, they say, is “to protect the family and the home.”
Dr. James S. Wood tells a story of his experience With a young woman of 25, married five years, when she came to him. The husband admitted having had gonorrhoea previous to marriage. The doctor found her flowing excessively, the cervix badly torn, the uterus sharply bent back and fixed, ovaries bound down and adherent, the tubes thickened; a leuchorreal discharge was present which contained gonococci, and other symptoms which made her sick and miserable. The doctor operated upon her, scraping her womb, sewing the torn cervix, opening the abdomen to remove the thickened appendix and inflamed ovaries and tubes. She convalesced beautifully, and had no bad or unusual symptoms for six months, at which time she returned with a renewed infection. Careful questioning extracted from the husband the confession that he had been “out with the boys,” and had had a recurrence of gonorrhoea. Most of the good which came from the operation was spoiled by this second infection.
This is only one simple example of what is meant by preserving the home and family at the terrible cost of women's lives. Women should protest against the so-called medical secret which decrees that they be kept in ignorance where their health, as well as life, is directly concerned. That there are men in the medical profession in this country, as well as in Europe, who have openly protested against respecting the secret where another life is involved, seems a cheerful signal of a general social awakening in this field.
In the Medical Record, April 20, 1912, Maude Glasgow says: “After suffering for years a woman becomes a feeble, worn-out, nervous woman; her life is a burden The operating table is her only hope, and she leaves it deformed, mutilated and sexless.”
If women voluntarily exposed themselves to diseases which would sap the husband's vitality, making him a dependent invalid, or expose him to the shock of a mutilating operation, or death—would men continue to suffer? Would they allow the medical secret to protect women in this alleged “freedom”? Every girl knows he would neither protect her nor continue to suffer. It is women only who have allowed the double standard of morals to stand so long, giving men the purest and best of their womanhood, but not demanding the same from them. As soon as women realize the danger to themselves and their children which they are likely to incur from men who have lived promiscuously, they will revolt against such standards.
Gonorrhoea differs from syphilis, and though it is not a disease which can be transmitted from the parent to children, as syphilis can, yet it is a subtle, wrecking disease and can do almost as much harm to the individual.
WHAT EVERY GIRL SHOULD KNOW