Sex/Chapter IX

by Henry Stanton

Sex diseases

The sex diseases are the same in both sexes, whether developed by direct or accidental infection. They are the greatest practical argument in favor of continence, morality and marriage in the sex relation.

Gonorrhea

Gonorrhea is a pus-discharging inflammation of the canal known as the urethra, which passing through the entire length of the organ, carries both the urine and the seminal fluid. It is caused by a venereal bacillus, the gonococcus. Under favorable conditions and with right treatment, gonorrhea may be cured, though violently painful, in fourteen days. Often the inflammation extends, becomes chronic and attacks other organs. This chronic gonorrhea often causes permanent contraction of the urethra, which leads to the painful retention of urine, catarrh of the bladder, and stone. Chronic gonorrhea, too, often ends in death, especially if the kidneys are attacked. A cured case of gonorrhea does not mean immunity from further attacks. New infections are all the more easily acquired. Gonorrhea has even more dangerous consequences in women than in men. The gonococcus bacilli infect all the inner female genital organs. They cause frequent inflammations and lead to growths in the belly. Women thus attacked usually are apt to be sterile; they suffer agonies, and often become chronic invalids. The child born of a gonorrheal mother, while passing through the infected genital organs, comes to life with infected eyelids. This is Blennorrhea, which may result in total blindness. Gonorrhea also causes inflammation of the joints, gonorrheal rheumatism, testicular inflammations which may lead to sterility. Some authorities claim that fully half the sterility in women is caused by gonorrheal infection of the Fallopian tubes. Gonorrheal infection of the eyes at birth is now prevented by first washing them in a saturated solution of boric acid, then treating them with a drop of weak silver solution.

The soft chancre

The soft chancre is the third form of venereal disease (the hard chancre being the first stage of syphilis). It is the least dangerous of the venereal diseases, but unfortunately, relatively the one which occurs most seldom. When not complicated with syphilis, it appears locally. It is a larger or smaller sore feeding and growing on the genital organs.

Venereal in advocate of continence

The most tragic consequence of all venereal disease is the part it plays in the infection of innocent children, and innocent wives and mothers. Often a pure and chaste woman is thus deprived in the most cruel and brutal manner of the fruit of all her hopes and dreams of happiness. Similarly, a young man may find himself hopelessly condemned to a short life of pain and misery. He may also suffer from the knowledge that he has ruined the lives of those dearest to him. Venereal disease, syphilis in particular, emphasizes the practical value of continence—quite aside from its moral one—in a manner which cannot be ignored!