Chancroid, or soft chancre, shows itself as an acute painful destructive ulcer of the genitals followed by buboes or swollen lymph nodes in the inguinal (crotch) area. In LGV there is also a primary sore on the genitals, followed by buboes in the groin; but the initial sore may be small and go unnoticed, especially in women, while the buboes in LGV break down and discharge pus, typically through several openings, and heal forming scar tissue. The LGV infection may spread to neighboring lymph nodes in the abdominal area or in the rectum and lead to painful contracting scars.

Gonorrhea, the most important member of the VD group apart from syphilis, usually starts in a few days — three to five — after contact, typically as a urethritis in men and as vaginitis in women. It begins suddenly, with the urge to urinate frequently in men, with burning pain and with much thick pus in the urine.

Nothing so clearly shows the differences among diseases as such easily distinguishable microbes. Given these differences, fortified with specific antigen antibody reactions, one can go back to clinical differences with confidence. Yet Astruc may just possibly have been right when he suggested that a case of genital ulceration might have been anthrax.

Dr. Bernfeld has a wit appropriate to his mission, which is expressed in four terse case reports. There are cases of false diagnosis, two of gonorrhea and one of syphilis. In one the patient's wife had left him, although she later returned when the facts were established. The fourth case records an explosion between husband and wife over the husband's conclusion that trichomonads found in the wife's vagina implied unfaithfulness. Dr. Bernfeld, as though proving that Brieux's idea of a doctor is still viable, mentions that:

It is time to be more explicit about VD, especially what the different forms look like and how we tell them apart. We all agree in listing two diseases, chancroid and lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV), in addition to syphilis and gonorrhea as "true" venereal diseases, plus another which we are now finding reason to separate from the group, plus a miscellaneous collection of still others on which there is disagreement.