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. Women may not notice any symptoms, or may have a discharge of pus from the vagina with pain as in men. In many cases of gonorrheal vaginitis, the rectum is also infected. A common direct consequence of gonorrhea in women is invasion of the Fallopian tubes which extend from each side of the uterus. When this happens it often leads to sterility by closure of the tubes. Complications following the initial symptoms may affect both sexes. When they appear it is usually after an intervening period of latency or apparent good health like that in early syphilis, during which the disease remains fully transmissible. The commonest complications involve the joints as arthritis or the lining of the heart as endocarditis; but many other tissues and organs may be affected.

Gonococcal vaginitis or vulvovaginitis, in young girls before puberty, was once put down to contact with contaminated towels and such things, but VD is not communicated that way. Direct contact, usually with infected adults, is now known to be the means of infection here as elsewhere. Gonorrheal. infection of the eyes of babies at birth so called ophithalmia neonatorum results from contact with an infected vaginal wall during the birth process. The symptoms appear a few days after birth and usually lead to blindness. The use of silver nitrate solution, or penicillin, or another antibiotic routinely dropped into the eyes of the baby at birth, has largely controlled this problem. With decreasing incidence of this disease, such treatment of babies' eyes was stopped in some places. With a rising prevalence of gonorrhea, ophthalmia neonatorum has been reappearing both in this country and abroad; and routine prophylaxis is accordingly being restored.