Chancroid is usually painful and disables a man to a smaller or greater extent, so for this reason it is seldom neglected. Under proper care, Chancroid heals up in from three to six weeks. Only in exceptional cases, due to low vitality and general debility of the patient, or due to unusual virulence (intensity) of the Chancroidal poison, the Chancroidal ulcer assumes a gangrenous character, and in spite of the best treatment, shows a tendency to spread and to destroy a large area of tissue. But even in these rare cases, after a few weeks or months, the ulcerated area gradually heals up without leaving any permanent systemic damage.
The only complication Chancroid has is a development of bubo, an abscess of inguinal (groin) glands. Buboes develop in about half the Chancroidal cases, and are treated by incision on general surgical principles. The average duration of a bubo is from three to four weeks, and the total duration of the average Chancroid and bubo from six to eight weeks.
While Chancroid brings more pain and distress and disables a patient more than many Gonorrheal complications and average Syphilitic cases, in reality, Chancroid is the least harmful of all venereal diseases, as it has a self-limited duration, never penetrates into the blood, does not lead to any deep or constitutional complication, and does not affect whatsoever the second generation.
Syphilis
Syphilis is one of the oldest diseases in human history. Its ravages and destruction of health and life thruout many centuries up to our days have been such that it has been called a “black plague,” in distinction from the great “white plague,” tuberculosis. It is hard to say which one of the scourges of humanity is superior in its destruction and wrecking of humanity. While tuberculosis apparently carries away more lives in their prime and selects victims principally among the young at the very height of individual happiness and social usefulness, Syphilis surpasses its terrible rival in its universal character of distribution, in the easier mode of infection, and more lasting presence of the poison in the human body. No country or climate is free from the scourge of Syphilis. No age, no station of life gives protection from its infection. Syphilis claims its millions of victims in all parts of the universe. It has populated cemeteries with untold numbers of bodies of still-born babies and infants who died in the early months of life; it has filled the insane asylums of the world with thousands of hopelessly insane men and women; it has crowded the institutions for the incurable and defective with paralytic adults and children crippled mentally and physically from birth.
The individual suffers as much from the ravages of Syphilis as society. Lucky is the man who can say that he is perfectly cured from Syphilis after two or three years of the most thorough treatment. Lucky is the man if he can be sure that later in life, after he may have forgotten all about his primary infection, the dormant germs of Syphilis lurking in the deep recesses of his body will not attack his most vital organs, as arteries, heart, or brain, and will not strike him down to permanent invalidism or slow but hopeless agony of an incurable disease.
Great as the latest medical discoveries in the recognition and treatment are, the course of the disease is so insidious and treacherous, and the treatment requires such persistence and patience and such expenditure of time and money, that probably no more than half of the syphilitic patients carry out to the end the treatment and period of medical observation, and thousands and thousands of them are sure to be stricken down later in life with the above mentioned terrible after-complications of Syphilis, and are doomed to premature invalidism, paralytic diseases, and insanity.
Diagnosis (Recognition) of Syphilis.
In every disease an early and correct diagnosis is an essential condition for a successful treatment. This is particularly true in Syphilis. The early recognition of Syphilis can prevent a development of most dangerous complications, can forestall the destruction of most vital nervous centers and organs.
The recognition of Syphilis is beset with peculiar difficulties, due to the fact that Syphilis has a remarkable tendency to imitate in appearance all possible diseases. This simulation is rendered particularly effective because Syphilis has universal and all-pervading distribution in the human body, and not a single part, organ, or tissue is free from the invasion of syphilitic poison. Until lately the diagnosis of Syphilis was based on the rather uncertain basis of clinical experience, but the latest medical discoveries have put it upon a more definite foundation, and rendered it immeasurably more certain.