GONOCOCCIC MENINGITIS IN A NEW BORN INFANT

Abstract

Since Home,¹in 1805, observed certain nervous manifestations associated with gonorrhea, occasional reports have appeared of gonococcic disease of the brain and meninges. The literature accumulated on this rare condition during the next hundred years was well reviewed in 1909 by Henderson and Ritchie.²The gonococcus was first discovered in 1879, and the differential sugar reactions and other methods of identification, such as agglutination, agglutinin absorption and complement fixation, were not introduced until 1905. It is quite obvious, therefore, that reports of cases before that time were based chiefly on clinical evidence. A gram-negative diplococcus isolated from purulent spinal fluid during the course of gonococcic infection within the urinary tract does not necessarily prove the organism to be the gonococcus. Meningococcic meningitis may easily appear in a patient suffering from gonococcic infection elsewhere. Moreover, Pick 3 cited an instance in which meningococcic infection of the seminal vesicles followed