Gonorrhoea in female |
In most cases gonorrhoea remains confined to the pudendum; but frequently it gradually progresses through the vagina as far as the uterus, more particularly if it lasts a long time; after having disappeared in every other part, it may localize itself in the uterus, and, without causing any other ailments, may occasion those uterine catarrhs which are often of such an equivocal nature, and which without betraying their true character by any external signs, are nevertheless capable of transmitting the venereal infection by coit.
In the female gonorrhoea, the inflammation may extend to the ovaries, as in the male to the testicles; who knows whether a number of ovarian affections in old prostitutes do not owe their existence to such a cause?
Another complication, which can only take place in females, is the spreading of the inflammation to the anus and the lower border of the rectum; these organs being so situated that, when the female is lying on her back, the discharge from the vagina most necessarily gravitate towards them, and must corrode them to a greater or less extent. Such an invasion of the back parts by the gonorrhoeal disease frequently developes a true anal gonorrhoea (as I know from personal observation), with extensive soreness of the surrounding parts, profuse secretion, frequent tenesmus, and very frequently such violent pains during an evacuation that they cause the patient to scream and tremble.
We hardly need allude to the fact that the metastases of which mention was made when treating of the gonorrhoea of males, such as ophthalmia, articular rheumatism, may likewise occur among females. Among the latter, however, they seem to be less frequent than among the former.