Gonococcal pharyngeal infection.

Gonococcal infection of the oral cavity is not new. Luys (1921) stated that blennorragie buccale in newborn babies occurred with relative frequency, together with gonococcal ophthalmia, and that both could cause pronounced symptoms. He stated further that blennorragie buccale also occurred in adults, but less frequentlv than rectal gonorrhoea. Janet (1929) stated that he had observed three cases in prostitutes in whom the mouth had been a reservoir for gonococci leading to gonorrhoeal urethritis amongst their clients. Subsequently, gonococcal infection of the oral cavity and pharynx seems to have been almost forgotten; but with the increased spread of gonorrhoea, especially amongst young people, which is following sexual liberation, reports of this type of gonococcal infection have again begun to appear. This renewed interest coincides with recent improvements in the demonstration of gonococci on selective culture media, and we are now able to confirm what the early venereologists had observed clinically and microscopically. Schmidt, Hj0rting-Hansen, and Philipsen (1961) reported gonococcal stomatitis in a male patient who had had oro-genital contact with his fiancee who was found to have genital gonorrhoea. Fiumara, Wise, and Many (1967) demonstrated gonorrhoeal pharyngitis in three homosexual males. Thatcher, McCraney Kellogg, and Whaley (1969) found gonococci in the pharynx of one out of 505 asymptomatic men. Hellgren (1971) found gonococcal tonsillitis in one out of thirty males and in one out of twenty females with uro-genital gonorrhoea, all of whom had had oro-genital contact. Bro-J0rgensen and Jensen (1971) in an investigation of unselected consecutive Danish patients with gonorrhoea, demonstrated N. gonorrhoeae by culture from tonsillar swabs in six out of 95 men and in six out of 66 women. Holmes, Counts, and Beaty (1971) stated that N. gonorrhoeae had been recovered from the oro-pharynx of eighty