Lectures on syphilis : delivered at the Harveian Society, December, 1876 / by James R. Lane.

  • Lane, James R. (James Robert)
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on syphilis : delivered at the Harveian Society, December, 1876 / by James R. Lane. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    experiments by inoculation performed by three medical students on their own persons, the result of which was in direct contradiction to that obtained by Hunter on himself. All three introduced the matter of gonorrhoea between the prepuce and the glans, and allowed it to remain ; the result was inflammation—balanitis, in fact —but no chancre. Two of them introduced chancrous matter into the urethra; the result in both was urethral chancre, followed by bubo, and in one by secondary symptoms, but no gonorrhoea. Hunter's views on the identity of these two diseases do not seem to have found much favour with the ^Titers who succeeded him. Nevertheless, the practice of giving mercury for gonorrhoea appears to have been the general rule in the profession, and was not till long afterwards finally abandoned. In fact, in spite of authoritative teaching, we find Sir A. Cooper, in his lectures published in 1829, expressing himself in the following uncompromising fashion. He says: No greater folly, or indeed cruelty, can be committed than that of giving mercury for the cure of this disease ; a man must be grossly ignorant or shamefully negligent of the duties which he owes to the character of his pro- fession and to the common dictates of humanity if he persists in doing so. I scarcely ever enter the foul wards, because patients are compelled to undergo so infamous a system of treatment that I cannot bear to witness it. To compel an unfortunate patient to undergo a course of mercury for a disease which does not require it is a proceeding which reflects disgrace and dishonour on the character of a medical institution. If you go to a patient in the foul wards at the end of his course and ask him how many times he has rubbed in, he will generally answer ' Twenty-eight times.' If you