Antiquarian notices of syphilis in Scotland in the 15th & 16th centuries / by J.Y. Simpson.

  • Simpson, James Young, 1811-1870.
Date:
[1862?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Antiquarian notices of syphilis in Scotland in the 15th & 16th centuries / by J.Y. Simpson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    designate the affection. To quote one confirmatory sen- tence from Astruc (p. ii66), the disease Gore et Grand- gore a GaHis initio vocata erat. John le Maire, in his celebrated poem on syphihs, pubHshed in 1520, gives this as one of the designations of the disease used at that time by the commonalty :— '' La nommoit Gorre ou la verole grosse, Qui n'espargnoit ne couronne ne crosse. ^ Old Rabelais, whose Gargantiia and Pantagniel are perfect repositories of the low and licentious French words of the era at which syphilis first appeared, uses the term Grandgore as a synonyme for syphilis; and in his wild allegorical style he makes the poor and widowed poet, Rammagrobis, take this grandgore to bed for his second wife. The term Grandgore seems to have been applied to the disease in Scotland for a long time after its introduc- tion. For example, the author of the Historic of the Kennedys quotes a letter, written in the latter part of the sixteenth century by the Laird of Colzean to the Laird of Bargany, whose neise was laich, maliciously suggesting to him that yet he might lose sum uther joynt of the Glengoir, as ye did the brig of your neise. ^ Still later, or in 1600, the Kirk Session of Glasgow requested the magis- trates to consult the chirurgeons how the infectious dis- temper of Glengore could be removed from the city.^ In Scotland, as elsewhere, the disease also passed under other designations. When syphilis first broke out it was frequently, as is well known, designated from the ^ Astruc, p. 634. 2 Historical, &c., Account of the Principal Families of tlie name of Kennedy, P- 17- * Cleland, in 1st Part of the Transactions of the Glasgow and Clydesdale Statistical Society, p. 13. 15 PART I. Data. Rabelais. Other names.