On a new way of treating gonorrhoea / by John L. Milton.

  • Milton, J. L. (John Laws), 1820-1898.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On a new way of treating gonorrhoea / by John L. Milton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    nxcter, so that greater progress is ol'ten made by the use of one injection, than by the most energetic employment of antiphlo- gistic medicines, repose, and low diet. It would only be wasting the reader's time to insist upon the value of such results as these. A rapid, safe, and easy cure of a disagreeable disease, by a cheap, inoffensive, and attainable re- medy ; freedom from obnoxious complications and results, such as stricture, chordee, swelled testicle, and irritable bladder, are advantages so great that it would be idle to weigh against them the only objection to the plan, the severe pain which follows its application. And again, when it is not thought advisable to check the dis- ease so speedily, nitrate of silver, used in a milder form in gra- dually increased quantities, aflfords the happiest results ; under its powerful influence the urethra loses its vivid redness, and assumes a paler or bluish cast; the discharge steadily disappears; the pain on erection and making water subsides, and a rapid and per- manent cure is obtained with more certainty and less pain than attends the use of any other remedy. In making this statement, I am borne out not only by the experience of a host of surgeons, worthy in every way of the most unreserved confidence, but by that deep conviction which can only spring from repeated and accurate observation. But the rock on which it has always split, is its want of suc- cess, if not injurious results, in a large number of cases. Not only does it often fail in the hands of the generality of surgeons, but even in those of its warmest advocates, who candidly confess that they are obliged to resort to other injections ; or the disease will go on unchecked till perhaps a stricture is formed, or those harassing complications ensue which have gained for gonorrhoja such an evil name. At other times a fixed pain takes up its seat in the under line of the urethra, at some point between the freenum and the front edge of the scrotum, leading to the suspicion that stricture is coming on ; and after the most persevering trials the nitrate is given up, as the surgeon can no longer shut his eyes to the conviction that in place of doing good it is doing positive harm. Even when the discharge has nearly left it will in some unfa- vourable cases return, and that not because the injection has been left ofi' too soon, for it has perhaps been continued. The fre-