“I never was much for that wild swinging type of party though. Except for that one party, I never was at a place where other people were going at it and I don’t think I miss it much. When I get turned on, see, all I want to do is get with a man and let it happen. I don’t care much about lying around and watching other girls get it.”

Linda G-, the author of the preceding case history, is a secretary for a small business firm in one of our larger cities. She has never married and shrugs off questions about her marriage plans by admitting that she seems to tire of men too quickly to make permanent plans. As her grammar indicates, she is poorly educated, though her work record shows that she is capable and efficient at performing the limited duties required of her. She took a secretarial course in high school and, upon being graduated, went to work.

The illness which necessitated the visit to the doctor, about which she spoke at some length, was vaginitis. Specifically, she appears to have contracted a vaginal trichomonal infection. “Vaginitis caused by trichomonas,” writes the author of a popular health column found in many underground newspapers, “is characterized by itching and a foul smelling yellow-green discharge. In the male there are usually no symptoms though there may be a thin discharge and some burning or itching on urination.” (Eugene Schoenfeld, M.D., Dear Dr. Hip, p. 51.) The condition is caused by trichomonas vaginalis, “a single-celled organism which is readily identified under a microscope… and which “is identical in appearance” to an organism more commonly found in the digestive tract. (Ibid.) The theory, borne out all too frequently in practice, is that the organism is transferred from the anus to the vagina by careless lovemaking.

Curiously the trichomonad gives no difficulty as long as it is confined to the anal tract. Only when it is transferred to the vagina, does it begin creating problems.