Publisher's Synopsis
EVERY medical man who will study to investigate as far as possible, in every case, the original channel through which disease or constitutional disorder first found its entry into the system, will be astonished at the mass of human suffering which may be traced up to a venereal origin, although its primary symptoms may have been for years apparently eradicated from the frame. The malady generally commences its attack in early life, before experience has overcome the short-sighted heedlessness of youth, and taught it to look beyond the pains and pleasures of the passing moment. Delicacy or shame will not allow him to seek assistance, until the poison has acquired strength and virulence too alarming to be neglected; and the patient then, instead of applying to his usual professional friends, flies to some empirical practitioner, who temporarily arrests the external symptoms, and discharges him as cured. Thus matters go on, until the malady becomes constitutional; and the patient is at last compelled to place himself under the treatment of those who, at an earlier period, might have preserved his constitution untainted, and his body comparatively uninjured by the ravages of this insidious disease.
