A Treatise on Venereal Diseases (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A TREATISE ON VENEREAL DISEASES. PART I. PRIMITIVE VENEREAL DISEASE, In the announcement of the classification which I have adopted, I have already explained what I understand by the terms primitive venereal disease. It may arise simply from irritation, or, from a specific cause, hence may follow affections non-specific; or specific, virulent. Thus, the lesions discussed in our first division may be regarded as simple local inflammations; certain instances of blen- norrhagia are of this class. But, as the syphilitic virus is the most common cause, these affections are, generally, neither simple nor local; if, for example, chancre should possess this character, it would no longer be a chancre, that is, a specific ulceration, but simply a suppurating wound. After the phenomena, which, by all, are regarded as primitive, will be found discussed in this division those which by others are called consecutive; hence the despair of the nosologists who pretend to be strictly logical, and of the syphilographers who profess to be governed by absolute laws; among these affections are the mucous tubercles. I have assigned them a place between the primitive and consecutive symptoms, to show that when caused by a specific virus the disease is the same, and that the facts which relate to it belong to both. A more arbitrary course might separate them; but it should be understood that the arrangement here adopted is but provisory and artificial, to assist the comprehension of junior minds. Most of the diseases of this first division are of an acute nature, and assume a more or less inflammatory form. Besides the symptoms which may be attributed to the virus, others more direct, more immediate, of an inflammatory character, manifest themselves. Indeed, if the testicles, the prostate g...