Female gonorrhoea


Female gonorrhoea, its presentation, course and homeopathic treatment by J.H.Allen in chronic miasm vol. 2….


The diagnosis can be made easily in the male, owing to the painful and distinctly marked symptoms, but in the female we do not have such extremely painful and distinctly local symptoms. Occasionally urinary symptoms of quite a severe character are present, which call our attention to the presence of the disease in the acute state. In the more chronic or later stages of the disease, the leucorrhoeal discharges and the pruritus are quite diagnostic, especially if the pruritus is induced by the acidity of the discharge. Some women are so accustomed to vaginal discharged of some kind that they seldom seek medical help in good time, therefore the disease is apt to be chronic before they begin treatment. Often, however, the severity of the pruritus, or perhaps a severe vulvitis will drive them early to the physician, thus we seldom get an acute stage of gonorrhoea in women to treat and especially in married women.

Often when these patients come to their physician for relief, they have previously fallen into the hands of men who do not understand the treatment of this disease, or the importance of avoiding suppressive measures in its treatment, and so great damage is done by suppression of leucorrhoeal discharges, by strong medicated lotions. Secondary processes are brought on in some of the pelvic organs (secondary inflammations) and the patient’s sufferings are increased from day to day, often with alarming symptoms. It would have been better had she not applied for assistance from her physician in the first place, but had suffered with the disease in its original state, or in the sub- acute condition.

Gonorrhoea in women is, of course, rendered more grave by the direct communication with the pelvic organs; the disease being fanned into renewed activity at each nisus. It is also greatly magnified if she become pregnant, as abortion is so liable to take place at any intermediate period, and is followed by a general infection and general pelvic invasion of the disease. Where the disease is contracted in a chronic or latent form, the women cannot fix any date; often she may never be aware of the cause of her illness. Many times we see women who have suffered untold misery from the disease, contracted from their husbands. In a latent state, and finally died within a few years with a complication of diseases. It is certainly the duty of every man who has had gonorrhoea to abstain from marriage until he has had permission from a physician who understand all these phases of the disease, and can give him intelligent advice.

Not infrequently, when we are called to see a woman suffering from gonorrhoea, the young life is already wrecked; the fires are not just lighted, but are a smoldering heap. We see the furred tongue, the foul breath, the fever, the misery, the suffering, and the pain; we see surgical cases, the removal of organs, death processes with their organic changes in the pelvis, bad mental states, and all the untold story of its chamber of horrors.

The favorite sites of gonorrhoea in women are the urethra, vagina, Bartholin’s glands, the uterus, Fallopian tubes, ovaries, and peritoneal cavity. It causes sterility, even to a greater degree than Syphilis. Not infrequently sterility follows after the first birth, but if a mild or latent form of the disease be present it may not follow until the birth of the second child. In twenty-four per cent. of the French marriages no children are born, and in twenty percent. only one child was born, and for this condition Syphilis is given as the cause. If these statistics are true, and we have no reason to doubt them, then is it astounding? This together with the sterility due to Sycosis, and annual abortion, has put the birth rate of France down until it is lower perhaps than any other country in the world. The cause of complete sterility lies more frequently, I think, with husbands, who have had repeated attacks of gonorrhoea previous to marriage, than with the wives. “Stricture”, says Scott, “is chronic gonorrhoea, and it is not to be treated as single symptoms, as implied in the word stricture; it is not to be dilated with bougies, cut open with instruments or treated with medicated lotions.” No! it is to be treated as chronic gonorrhoea; knowing that to remove by mechanical or chemical methods this offending lesion, is to suppress the disease which is sure to appear in some form, usually a tertiary one. Such treatment causes us to become the fathers of disease and the perpetrators of crime. Sir Henry Thompson has given us a few statistics, showing the development of strictures in different patients out of 164 cases. The development was as follows: “Ten cases of stricture acquired during the acute state, seventy during the first year, forty-one from three to four years, twenty-two from seven to eight, and twenty from twenty to twenty- five years.” So you see stricture comes not alike to all; the time required for the disease, gonorrhoea to form a bond with Psora, varies and is modified, of course, by the character of the treatment, the constitutional dyscrasia and the natural resistance of the life force in each case. It is when the patient is on the downward track, that complications develop, and the life force begins to suffer from the effects of suppression, and new processes begin to show themselves. We notice by a close study of gonorrhoea that a systemic involvement takes place during the pause period that elapses after infection, know as the period of incubation (seen also in Syphilis). Still farther, remember that gonorrhoea is not a self-limiting disease as taught in our works on pathology. True, the acute phenomena are self- limiting, but the systemic or constitutional involvement never leaves the organism unless removed by the law of similia. No other treatment will remove it; this I say without hesitation or reserve. James Foster Scott in his work, “Sexual Instinct,” says on page 336, “Chronic Gonorrhoea is often spoken of as synonymous with gleet, but the former term is more correct.” This is true, gleet is but a symptom, yet a very positive and sure one, of the disease after it has relapsed into a chronic state. Relapses occur when we change the remedy too soon, or fail to select the proper one. Seldom have I attributed relapses to any other source.

Every author will tell you that the gonococci lie dormant or in other words remain latent in the organism for years. But this is only a term, and done to uphold the germ theory of disease; we understand the disease to be latent, and, that the gonococci are but the result of the degenerate or death process of all disease. There are thousands today of both sexes who are suffering with some latent form or expression of gonorrhoea that physicians do not recognize. They do not see the connecting link due, to either and imperfectly cured or suppressed case of gonorrhoea. Ricord’s admission concerning the obstinacy of gleet is decidedly pat. In his writings he speaks of having a dream (which will illustrate very clearly the allopathic physicians’ conception of this disease, and their inability to cure it) of being dead and of having been sent to Purgatory. When asked what sort of a place it was he replied: “Pleasant enough, except for the fact that the whole troop of male specters about him pointed each the ghastly finger of scorn and exclaimed: ‘Ricord! You could not cure the gleet.’ ” (G. Frank Lydsten, M.D, Gonorrhoea and Its Treatment Page 79).

Those who succeed in suppressing chronic gleet, can never truthfully say that they have made a cure; they have simply driven the disease in upon the organism, to manifest itself sooner or later in some other form, or to be brought to light in their wives or children. We must not look upon gleet as a local lesion or local inflammation, but as a smoldering amber of latent internal fire. Sir Henry Thompson puts before us, a few statistics of the time of development of gleet. Out of 164, cases the record was as follows: In 10 cases, the disease developed during the acute stage of gonorrhoea; 71 during the first year; 41 within three years; 22 within eight years, and 20 did not develop until between the twentieth and twenty-fifth year. Do you recognize the value of these statistics? Does it not show you the chronicity of the disease, as well as the evolution of the processes in each individual? It shows besides that it is not a self-limiting disease as is supposed by most authors. This writer says further, and here he agrees with the teachings of Hahnemann, “That the tissues of man in the prime of life, resist disease, and the repair and waste processes keep an approximately parallel course but when he begins to go down hill, and turn his face towards the evening of life, then the balance between repair and waste is discovered in favor of the latter. ” Nothing will start these retrograde processes or degenerative actions in the organism like a suppressed disease in its acute or malignant aspect. Too much cannot be said on this subject or suppression, when we see the degeneration and destruction of the race follow in the wake of the prevalent suppressive treatments. We must bring this subject to a close, however as we cannot afford the space in this work to give clearer light upon it.

John Henry Allen
Dr. John Henry Allen, MD (1854-1925)
J.H. Allen was a student of H.C. Allen. He was the president of the IHA in 1900. Dr. Allen taught at the Hering Medical College in Chicago. Dr. Allen died August 1, 1925
Books by John Henry Allen:
Diseases and Therapeutics of the Skin 1902
The Chronic Miasms: Psora and Pseudo Psora 1908
The Chronic Miasms: Sycosis 1908