Syphilis in obstetrics / by William J. Gow.

  • Gow, William J.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Syphilis in obstetrics / by William J. Gow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sometimes very small, and may appear more like an abrasion than an ulcer. All signs of it may have disappeared before the develop- ment of secondary symptoms. Further, it cannot be denied that the severity of the disease varies very greatly in women, as in truth it does in men, and that in mild cases in women, both the primary sore and the secondary symptoms seem to be sometimes entirely overlooked by the patients themselves, or else the symp- toms are so slight that the remembrance of them is soon effaced from the mind, so that no history of the disease can be obtained. The absence of any definite history of S3rphilis in the case of women who must certainly have had the disease and acquired it by direct contagion is a matter of common knowledge and experience. Thus the woman who gives birth to a S3rphilitic child, and herself presents at this time no signs of the disease, may really have passed through a mild attack of syphilis given to her by her husband either previous to or during the course of her pregnancy, the symptoms of which have passed unobserved. In this way the fact that the woman is not infected by nursing her syphilitic child may be explained. Professor Fournier’s statement that a wife may cease to miscarry if her husband, who has had S3q)hilis, be treated afresh with antisyphihtic remedies, is very striking, but many further facts of a similar nature would have to be collected before coincidence could be ehminated. Other objections to the doctrine of paternal heredity have been put forward. The chief of these are :— 1. The manifest disproportion between the number of syphi- litic husbands and the number of syphilitic children. 2. A S3q)hilitic man may marry a healthy woman and pro- create healthy children. 3. The non-inoculabihty of the spermatic fluid of syphihtic subjects. Although Professor Fournier does not deny this last point, but suggests that, although it is non-contagious by inoculation, it might still be able to contaminate the ovule. Fecundation and inoculation, as he rightly points out, in no way resemble each other. The practical importance of the existence or non-existence of conceptional syphihs is very great, as if it exists, the period of