These evils sink almost into insignificance when compared with the far
graver consequences of gonorrh[oe]a in woman. Our knowledge of this
subject is comparatively recent, being necessarily based upon the
discovery of the microbe that causes the disease. Now that it can be
identified, we learn that a vast proportion of the illnesses and
disorders peculiar to women have this cause, and it constantly leads to
the operations, now daily carried out in all parts of the world, which
involve opening the body, and all that that may entail. Curable in its
early stages in men, gonorrh[oe]a is scarcely curable in women except
by means of a grave abdominal operation, involving much risk to life and
only to be undertaken after much suffering has failed to be met by less
drastic means. The various consequences of gonorrh[oe]a in other parts
of the body may and do occur in women as in men. Perhaps the most
characteristic consequence of the disease in both sexes is sterility;
this being much more conspicuously the case in women, and being the more
cruel in their case.
Of course large numbers of women are infected with these diseases before
marriage and apart from it, but one or both of them constitute the most
important of the bridegroom's wedding presents, in countless cases every
year, all over the world. The unfortunate bride falls ill after
marriage; she may be speedily cured; very often she is ill for life,
though major surgery may relieve her; and in a large number of cases she
goes forever without children.
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