Symptoms And Effects

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31161, 10 September 1966, Page 26

Symptoms And Effects

Concerned that young persons have no way of learning easily about the symptoms, effects and treatment of venereal disease without deliberately seeking out medical advice or pamphlets, the North Canterbury Hospital Board’s venereologist has asked “The Press’ ’to print the following description:

The venereal diseases are a small group of infectious diseases which are transmitted from person to person by sexual intercourse. The causal organisms are so delicate that the infections are not caught in any other way—never by means of inanimate objects.

Gonorrhoea

The symptoms are different in the two sexes. The male, three to seven days after having taken the risk, develops a yellowish thick discharge, most evident on waking in the morning. Although pain and stinging are common there need be nothing else but a sense of discomfort. Diagnosis is made by the simple examination of a stained slide of the discharge. The female, after the same incubation period, may also develop a discharge, but on the other hand she has a 50-50 chance of developing no sign or symptom at all to tell her that she has caught the disease.

An attack of gonorrhoea confers no immunity; the sufferer can contract a fresh infection the day after cure of a previous one. If no treatment is given, symptoms may improve somewhat, but the person remains sexually infective indefinitely (although not every contact will be infected) and certain complications can occur which may be serious, especially in the female.

Inflammation and pain in some of the other organs of the sexual apparatus can occur in the male, not neces-

sarily a serious condition, but often requiring prolonged treatment for cure.

In the female, the germ can involve the fallopian tubes, causing acute pain in the lower abdomen, mimicking acute appendicitis and causing sterility. Authorities state that one out of every 20 females who contract gonorrhoea subsequently become sterile. A further proportion are likely to suffer tubal pregnancies, a serious condition which requires operative removal of the foetus at an early stage. The diagnosis is by bacteriological examination of the secretions or discharge, by a special technique. This is easy in the case of the male, but difficult in the female, from whom special bacterial cultures must be taken from the cervix.

Gonorrhoea is not passed on to the sufferer’s offspring, although the infants’ eyes may become mechanically infected during the process of birth. Treatment is simple and effective, consisting of two injections of penicillin 24 hours apart. Cases relatively resistant to penicillin are cured with larger doses, other antibiotics being reserved for those sensitive to penicillin. All cases are then kept under surveillance for a number of weeks, tests being repeated.

Syphilis

This disease starts with a painless open sore at or near the point of contact This appears between one and six weeks after contact. (Note the long incubation period.) In the female it may be hidden, but male “chancres,” as they are called, are usually obvious. However, any sore or abrasion, however small, after the subject has been exposed to infection, must be regarded with suspicion. The nearby lymph nodes in the groin become enlarged but not particularly tender. This constitutes the primary stage of infectious syphilis and, after a number of weeks, it merges into the secondary stage in which the patient suffers from rashes (of various types) all over his body, often involving the palms and soles, ulcers in the mouth and around the lips, and often around the other body orifices; a period of ill-health with frequently a mild fever, sore throat, enlarged glands, and loss of weight. Either or both of the above stages oan be suppressed if penicillin has been given during the incubation period for any other reason. These are the infectious stages and anyone coming into contact with the primary sore, or any of the moist ulcers of the A

secondary stage, will surely develop > primary sore at the point of contact, as the organism can enter through the apparently intact skin. The most powerful weapon we have in combating this potentially terrible disease is the tracing of contacts of both sexes.

If not treated, both the above stages “clear up” (the secondary one can last for months, or even more than a year), and the disease becomes “latent,” the patient feeling and looking perfectly well.

Second Attack Between five and 30 or more years later, the organism attacks again—the tertiary stage —and this time often involves a vital organ or system, resulting in a severe or fatal illness. The heart and great blood vessels or the nervous system are the most likely to be involved, but any organ or tissue can be affected.

The patient is not sexually infective during the latent and tertiary stages, but the Wassermann Test is strongly positive throughout. This remarkably simple and accurate blood test will immediately show whether a person has ever caught syphilis. Unlike gonorrhoea, syphilis is passed on by a mother to her offspring via the bloodstream, causing a stillbirth or a seriously ill baby; or the baby may be born apparently healthy, only to develop signs of syphilis later—but both mother and child will show a positive Wassermann reaction.

This happens during the secondary stage and also during the early latent stages when the mother looks and feels perfectly well. The treatment of syphilis is relatively short and simple. From one to three weeks of daily penicillin (with followup blood tests) cures more than 90 per cent of cases in any stage of the disease. However, in tertiary syphilis the amount of tissue damage is often so great that a cure will not prevent a fatal issue.

Treatment of the pregnant mother either prevents the infection of the baby completely or, if given in the latter half of the pregnancy, cures both mother and baby. Follow-up blood tests are essential for two or three years.

Non-Specific Urethritis

This is a “para-venereal” infection. It is a disease of males, sexually transmitted, and becoming increasingly common. It is seen as frequently as gonorrhoea, which it closely resembles, except that the incubation period is longer—up to six weeks—and the symptoms are milder, the disharge being scanty and pale. The infecting agent is not known, but is thought to be a virus. Other factors are certainly involved in its transmission, as the female consort, who is invariably normal on examination, may have had little (or rarely no) previous sexual experience. What is more, contacts other than the sufferer escape infection. Although mild, it is more difficult than gonorrhoea to cure and does not respond to penicillin. It has a marked tendency to relapse. Two other infections of this group that are common among the promiscuous are a vaginal discharge, caused by a unicelled organism called Trichomonas vaginale, and pubic lice.

IT ts not a question of jour ability to stand the cost of advertisement—but being able to survive witl out it The thing one has to consider is not only an extension of your business but of holding what you already have Advertising not only does not Increase the cost of the advertised article, but. on the contrary, makes economies possible that benefit consumers, K