History of the treatment of trichomoniasis.

Feminists have been heard to say that the late entry of women into the ranks of the medical profession has meant that, left to the tender mercies of mere men, the ills to which female flesh is heir have not been given the attention which they deserved. Our knowledge, for example, of the cause and prevention of mammary carcinoma seems to have made little advance since Ramazzini reported in 1713 that cancer of the breast was especially common in nuns. Similarly it could be said that, since Donne discovered Trichomonas vaginalis in 1836, no really successful method of treating trichomonal vaginitis had been devised in the 120 years that followed; and today our knowledge of the life cycle of that microorganism is still virtually nil. That three-letter word probably correctly describes the incidence of trichomoniasis in nunneries, but elsewhere it is a widespread infection occurring in women mainly in their most sexually active years. The history of the treatment of any disease is of necessity related to the history of the disease itself. For long the pathogenicity of T. vaginalis was questioned, and it has been in the professional lifetime of venereologists practising today that trichomoniasis has emerged as a clinical entity from that indeterminate rag-bag of conditions associated with what was descriptively called leucorrhoea and