Aristotle's works:: Containing the Master-piece, Directions for Midwives, and Counsel and Advice to Child-bearing Women with Various Useful Remedies
Aristotle · en
The Virulent Gonorrhœa is an involuntary discharge of infectious mucus
from the parts of generation in either sex. It generally makes its
appearance within eight or ten days after the infection has been
received; sometimes it appears in two or three days, and at other times
not before the end of four or five weeks. Previous to the discharge, the
patient feels an itching, with a small degree of pain in the genitals.
Afterwards a thin glary matter begins to distil from the urinary
passage, which stains the linen, and occasions a small degree of
titillation, particularly at the time of making water; this gradually
increasing, arises at length to a degree of heat and pain, which are
chiefly perceived about the extremity of the urinary passage, where a
slight degree of redness and inflammation likewise begins to appear.
As the disorder advances, the pain, heat of the urine, and running,
increase, while fresh symptoms daily ensue. In men the erections become
painful and involuntary, and are more frequent and lasting than when
natural. This symptom is most troublesome when the patient is warm in
bed.
The pain which was at first only perceived towards the extremity, now
begins to reach up all the urinary passage, and is more intense just
after the patient has done making water. The running gradually recedes
from the colour of semen, grows yellow, and at length puts on the
appearance of mucus.
When the disorder has arrived at its height, all the symptoms are more
intense; the heat of the urine is so great, that the patient dreads the
making water; and though he feels a constant inclination this way, yet
it is rendered with the greatest difficulty, and often only by drops;
the involuntary erections now become extremely painful and frequent;
there is also a pain, heat, and sense of fulness about the seat, and the
running is plentiful and sharp, of a brown, greenish, and sometimes of a
bloody colour.
By a proper treatment, the violence of the symptoms gradually abates;
the heat and urine goes off, the involuntary and painful erections, and
the heat and pain about the seat, become easier; and the running also
gradually decreases, grows whiter and thicker, till at last it entirely
disappears.
By attending to these symptoms, the gonorrhœa may be generally
distinguished from any other disease. There are, however, some few
disorders for which it may be mistaken, as an ulcer of the kidneys or
bladder, the _fluor albus_, or whites in women, &c. But in the former of
these, the matter comes away only with the urine, or when the sphincter
of the bladder is open; whereas in a gonorrhœa the discharge is
constant. The latter is more difficult to distinguish, and must be known
chiefly from its effects; as pain, communicating the infection, &c.