Syphilis is contagious and is transmitted by inoculation. The infectious material enters the broken surface of either the skin or mucous membrane, called "contact" or "acquired" syphilis. When it is transmitted by the mother to the embryo, it is called "hereditary" or "inherited" syphilis.
The disease manifests itself first in a "primary lesion" which is a local ulcer (hard chancre) at the point or points of inoculation at a period ranging from ten to thirty days after exposure. It may appear as an erosion or as a dry scaling and indurated papule, varying in size from a pin-head to a silver dollar. The base of the ulcer is indurated. It is oval in shape, perhaps somewhat irregular, with a raw surface and red colored base devoid of pus.
Immediately following the appearance of the chancre, the glands in direct connection with it become enlarged, hard and rarely painful, but they have no tendency to suppurate like the enlarged glands of chancroid.
The chancre disappears in a few weeks and then there is a period when the individual has no outward manifestations of the disease. In about six weeks after the chancre the so-called secondary symptoms make their appearance. They are heralded by headache, pains in the limbs and back, nausea, sleeplessness and nervous irritability and fever, followed by the appearance of a rash upon the face and body, falling out of the hair, sore throat and mouth. These symptoms disappear to be again followed by a period free from symptoms. After a longer or shorter time the so-called tertiary symptoms make their appearance, which are many and varied.
The disease presents a succession of morbid constitutional disturbances, appearing at variable intervals, and pursues a chronic course.
This disease remains in the body for years and affects the most vital organs, particularly the brain and spinal cord.
When one is infected with this disease he should seek the services of a reputable physician. The treatment of this extends over a long period, usually about three years, and must be strictly and conscientiously carried out. Marriage upon the part of an individual once infected should be only upon the approval of a physician.
After having detailed, as above, the terrible consequences of the venereal diseases, it is hardly necessary to add that the young man who deliberately seeks any of the usual chances for illicit intercourse, is more than taking his life in his hands. If infection with a venereal disease meant simply the death of the infected individual, it would really be very much less deleterious to society than is the present condition. When the young man "sows wild oats" and catches incidently gonorrhea, that twenty years ago was considered a sort of a "good joke," he will, in a large proportion of cases, lay the foundation for broken health and will run a serious risk of transmitting the disease to an innocent, pure wife.
When a woman catches this disease, particularly from her husband, she is very likely to interpret the discharge as a leucorrhea, may say nothing about it to her husband or her physician, but adopt simple home treatment with antiseptic and astringent douches. Such treatment will usually result in allaying the inflammation in the superficial organs, but will not eradicate it from the deeper organs. It spreads to the uterus, Fallopian tubes and ovaries and may even affect peritoneal tissues, first of the pelvis, then of the abdomen—may even finally affect the heart and joints. Of course, these are rather the extreme limit, but they are not at all rare cases. Once this terrible disease gets into a woman's organs, it is very likely to lead to a sojourn in a hospital where she loses some portion of her body as a sacrifice to this mogul of gonorrhea.
It is claimed by specialists in this field that at least sixty-five per cent. of the operations that women are subjected to in the hospitals for diseases of the pelvic organs are the results of gonorrheal infection. Besides the cases that require operation, a large proportion of cases of sterility is due to gonorrheal infection, either in the man or woman, or both.