As students of medicine we were taught to prescribe certain drugs,
both externally and internally, for a patient who presented himself for
treatment, and had certain local signs of a disease, the symptoms
of which are too well known to most of us to need a
minute or detailed description, at the same time we were
cautioned to collect our fee, which was the principal part of
the proceeding. We did not look for gonococci, or suggest
that a rapid cure would be the result of the treatment recom-
mended. In fact, we did not think of such a thing'untilan interval of



l8o MEDICAL SOCIETY OF NEW JERSEY.
two or three weeks, or perhaps months, had elapsed, when the case
was pronounced cured, but as often resulted in no cure at all, even at
that prolonged period. Relapses would occur after weeks or months
without any exposure whatever, and the poor innocent victim was
blamed for contracting another attack, and no matter how much he
might plead and affirm his purity, he was nevertheless living under a
cloud of suspicion of having recontracted the new outbreak. Were
it not for microscopical investigations of today we should not have
the confidence of our patients any more than in former years.
