Campbell[195] reported a gonorrheal infection of a compound fracture at the ankle--it required four months to get the wound free of the infection. Gonorrheal obliterating epididymitis is quite common. Delbet and Chevassu[196] found 114 cases of male sterility in 131 cases of epididymitis. More than half of such cases are left permanently sterile, and if the function of the testicle cannot be restored by the surgeon the patient is impotent, and any marriage he would make, ... is rendered void. These two surgeons have restored function in six such cases by uniting the vas with the epididymis by Martin's operation. It is much easier to restore function after vasectomy than after obliterating epididymitis. [195] _New York Medical Journal_, February 22, 1908. [196] _Canadian Presse Médic._, July, 1908. There are frequent cases of arthritic rheumatism in which the source of the infection is a chronic gonorrhea of the seminal vesicles. Fuller[197] has done 101 vesiculotomies for this condition, and of these twenty-three were gonorrheal. In these twenty-three the excision of the infected vesicles cured the rheumatism. In vesiculotomy great care must be taken not to cut the vas deferens. If it is cut the man is impotent until the vas is restored, and it would be a very difficult operation to reunite the vas if cut near the vesicles. [197] _New York Medical Journal_, May 30, 1908. Of all the gonorrheal affections of the body the most dangerous and important are the cardiac inflammations and ophthalmia neonatorum. This ophthalmia is a purulent infection of the external parts of the eye in infants. It may be caused by many kinds of toxic bacteria, but the worst cases are from the diphtheria bacillus (a very rare condition) and the gonococcus (a very frequent condition). Before 1881, when Credé introduced prophylactic treatment for ophthalmia neonatorum, every maternity hospital had a department isolated for the care of babies suffering with this disease. At the present day, however, despite the precautions taken, this disease is quite common. Pennsylvania and New York alone spent $242,000 annually for the support of asylums for the blind, and about 40 per cent. of the children in these institutions were blinded by gonorrheal ophthalmia. The United States spends $1,800,000 yearly on victims of ophthalmia neonatorum. Stephenson[198] tells us that in the practice of forty-one oculists who reported to him the gonococcus was found in 67.14 per cent. of their 1658 cases of ophthalmia. Mayou found the gonococcus in 63.5 per cent. of 1483 cases. [198] _Ophthalmia Neonatorum._ London. 1907.