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Updated: June 17, 2025
Heidingsfeld concludes that the regulation and control system in force in Cincinnati has done little good and much harm; under the system among the private patients in his own clinic the proportion of cases of both syphilis and gonorrhoea has increased; "suppression of prostitutes is impossible and control is impracticable."
By black plagues we mean the two diseases spoken of by physicians as the venereal diseases, because they usually are contracted during sexual intercourse. The most common of these diseases is gonorrhoea, or clap, as it often is called by men.
On the nostrils and fauces, when the secretion of these capillary glands is increased, it is termed simple catarrh; when in the intestines, a mucous diarrhoea; and in the urethra, or vagina, it has the name of gonorrhoea, or fluor albus.
In an Indiana case, concerning which I was consulted, the girl was a hebephreniac who had resorted to this procedure with a Newfoundland dog at the instance of another girl, seemingly normal as regards mentality, and had been badly injured; a discharge resulted which resembled gonorrhoea, but contained no gonococci. These cases are probably more frequent than is usually assumed."
This failure to realize the gravity of gonorrhoea, even sometimes on the part of the medical profession so that it has been popularly looked upon, in Grandin's words, as of little more significance than a cold in the nose has led to a reaction on the part of some towards an opposite extreme, and the risks and dangers of gonorrhoea have been even unduly magnified.
The Significance of the Venereal Diseases The History of Syphilis The Problem of Its Origin The Social Gravity of Syphilis The Social Dangers of Gonorrhoea The Modern Change in the Methods of Combating Venereal Diseases Causes of the Decay of the System of Police Regulation Necessity of Facing the Facts The Innocent Victims of Venereal Diseases Diseases Not Crimes The Principle of Notification The Scandinavian System Gratuitous Treatment Punishment for Transmitting Venereal Diseases Sexual Education in Relation to Venereal Diseases Lectures, Etc.
We cannot yet precisely measure the interval which must elapse before, so far as Europe at least is concerned, syphilis and gonorrhoea are sent to that limbo of monstrous old dead diseases to which plague and leprosy have gone and smallpox is already drawing near.
Gonorrhoea in its prevalence is thus only second to measles and in the gravity of its results scarcely second to tuberculosis. "And yet," as Grandin remarks in comparing gonorrhoea to tuberculosis, "witness the activity of the crusade against the latter and the criminal apathy displayed when the former is concerned."
The special reason why gonorrhoea has become so peculiarly serious a scourge is its extreme prevalence. It is difficult to estimate the proportion of men and women in the general population who have had gonorrhoea, and the estimates vary within wide limits. They are often set too high. Among the working classes the disease is much less prevalent than among higher-class people.
It is obviously so urgently necessary to combat the flood of disease and misery which proceeds directly from the spread of syphilis and gonorrhoea, and indirectly from the prostitution which is the chief propagator of these diseases, that we cannot be surprised that many should eagerly catch at any system which seems to promise a palliation of the evils.
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