TREATMENT OF GONORRHEAL VULVOVAGINITIS WITH ESTROGENS

The discovery of the organism responsible for gonorrheal infection in the genitalia by Neisser in 1879 established for the first time a sound basis for the investigation of genital infections. Soon thereafter it became recognized that some of the genital discharges in prepubertal girls were likewise gonorrheal in origin. This condition in young girls remained a distressing problem for the patients and their mothers, the physicians and the school authorities. Treatment of the condition through the next half-century was entirely symptomatic and empiric and produced little effect. Many therapeutic measures were tried and discarded, but it still required several months to several years to effect a cure in these unfortunate young girls.

After the isolation of estrogens by Allen and Doisy,¹ the effect of such agents on the genital organs of experimental animals and human subjects was intensively studied. In 1917 Stockard and Papanicolaou² reported the estrus cycle