The unity or duality of syphilis historically considered / by J.L. Milton.

  • Milton, J. L. (John Laws), 1820-1898.
Date:
1886
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The unity or duality of syphilis historically considered / by J.L. Milton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    same, for in substance they were asking the question, Why, if this be old, did we never see such results till now ? And the reason why is, according to him, a new state of the atmosphere. The mystification was not long to be delayed, and the task fell into the hands of two of the most incompetent and blunderinc^ observers of that or any other age, Massa and Bra/savolus; the first effectually began, and the other thoroughly dbmpleted the work of confusion. Massa, a person of narrow, superstitious views, who in an age of inquiry had not advanced a step beyond the crude opinions of the earliest observers, added, 1532, chancrous bubo to the body corporate. Bra^savolus, 1551, joined to the two forms of sypliilis, now fused into'one, gonorrhoea, recognised as a local complaint at least as far back as the time of John Ardeu. They carried the day. Though they were opposed by men like Fracastoro, Scaliger, and Fallopius, the tidal wave of obscurity which they had raised buried for a time at least all dissent, and has made itself felt often enough in the present century. Such men, having adopted an idea, seem incapable of any further impres- sion from either arguments or facts, and adhere to the first conviction in much the same way as the bivalve clings to the rock on which it has anchored itself. It will be unnecessary to reproduce the opinions of Fernelius, Fallopius, and others. They effected no particular change in the general belief. It wiU suffice to say that the reign of chaos, having fairly set in, went on with unvarying monotony, reaching, perhaps, its lowest depths in the pages of Sydenham, who wrote, I should say, the worst description of syphilis in the whole world,— the catastrophe in which, according to him, this disease naturally closes being a picture utterly untrue to nature, though quite iu keeping with the rest of his account. The limbs, he says, rot away piecemeal, and the mangled carcase, having at length grown hateful to the living, is buried in the earth. The views of Turner and others who followed Sydenham need not detain us, as they go for nothing in this question, the first real step towards the solution of: which was reserved for Hunter, with whom history ends audi pathology begins. PRINTED BY OLIVER AND BOYD, KDINBUROH