THE INFECTED WIFE.--It has been previously stated that eight out of every ten males between the ages of sixteen and thirty, have had or have, gonorrhea or syphilis. Seventy-five per cent. of these cases have not been cured. About thirty-five per cent. of these are destined to infect wife, or wife and children, and in all probability many others.
If a young wife acquires infection from her husband, she is exactly in the same condition as the diseased boy,--she does not know what ails her, so she wastes precious time in unprofitable worry. Why should she know what the trouble is? She came to the marriage bed pure, and clean, and healthy. Her previous education did not include instruction which would even help her to guess what the trouble might be. She is simply conscious of new distressing conditions which she does not understand. She may try to believe that these conditions are incidental to the change in her life. Shortly, however, the discharge, which she has had for a number of weeks, and which she thought was only a leucorrhea, or "the whites," becomes so profuse and nasty that she begins douching. This procedure simply blinds her to the true nature of the affection, and in the end she is driven, ashamed and reluctant, to consult a physician. She may be informed that her condition is bad, and that it will be necessary that she submit to a course of treatment. After a time the physician may succeed in tiding her over the immediate consequences of the gonorrheal infection she innocently acquired. She may soon after become pregnant, and she may miscarry as a result of the old trouble, or she may carry the child the full period. When the child is born it may be blind and this defect is a consequence of the old infection to the mother from the father. If the mother is syphilitic the child most likely will inherit all the horrible possibilities of transmitted blood-poison.
Pregnancy frequently "lights up" any old, gonorrheal infection in the female, so this young wife fails to completely recover after the confinement. She is able to be about, but her strength refuses to be restored. It may be months later when she begins to suffer pain and to realize that she is quite sick. She develops a fever and may have a chill. The physician discovers that she has pus in her tubes and there is danger of peritonitis or general blood poisoning. The old germs have been roused and are active. Unfortunately they are located where it is impossible to dislodge them without resorting to a serious operation. It is now a problem of saving her life. She is taken to the hospital and her womb, tubes, and ovaries, are removed--she is unsexed.