Volume 1

A treatise on syphilis : historical and practical / by E. Lancereaux ; translated by G. Whitley.

  • Lancereaux, E. (Etienne), 1829-1910.
Date:
1868-1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on syphilis : historical and practical / by E. Lancereaux ; translated by G. Whitley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tioa in the worship of that god ; but in reality it is impossible to find anything * which affords a satisfactory explanation of the patho- genic conditions of this plague. The vague indications of the thirteenth chapter of Leviticus, though doubtless indicating something different from leprosy, are, however, not more explicit. Neither do the nocturnal sufferings of Job, or the cicatrices and pus which covered his skin, call for serious criticism. Perhaps we might be called upon to attach more importance to the passage of Philo,t in which it is stated that cir- cumcision was ordered to prevent a serious disease, difficult to cure, called antJimx, to which the uncircumcised were subject, if there were anything to show that the disease in question was really syphilitic chancre. The old Greek physicians offer in their writings but few passages which relate in a positive manner to the history of syphilis ; never- theless, it might be possible to connect the following fragment of one of the books of Hippocrates with the epidemic of the fifteenth century J :— Many, says the father of medicine, had aphthae and ulcera- tions of the mouth, frequent fluxions of the geniral organs, ulcers, tumours internal and external, and swellings in the groins. Moist, chronic, and painful ophthalmias ; granulations on the inner and outer surfaces of the eyelids, which destroyed the sight of many persons, and which are called/cs. The other sores and the genital organs were also the seat of numerous fungous growths. In sum- mer were seen a great number of anthrax, and other affections which are called septic; also pustular eruptions and, in many, extensive vesicular eruptions. ReUgious practices explain better, doubtless, the point of history with which we are occupied. The myth which arose on the occasion of the transplantation of the worship of Bacchus, and with it of that of Phallus, from India to Greece, is in fact furnished us by Natalis Comes in a manner to make us believe that even at that period affec- tions of the genital organs were of a very serious nature. § After * See Numbers, chap. xv. verse 8, et chap. xxi. verses 16 et 17. + See Bosquillon,^ in his translation of Bell's Treaty, t. ii. p. 48. ' X Œuvres : des Épidémies, liv. iii. sect. iii. § 7; édit. Littré, t. 'iii. p. 85. § Mythologiœ, sive explicationes fabulorum, lib. x. Francf. 1588 viii*.