An introduction to the history of medicine : with medical chronology, bibliographic data and test questions / by Fielding H. Garrison.

  • Garrison, Fielding H. (Fielding Hudson), 1870-1935.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introduction to the history of medicine : with medical chronology, bibliographic data and test questions / by Fielding H. Garrison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    132/776 (page 128)
    King of Terrors. The axillary and inguinal, with the pulmonary, lesions would make it identical with modern bubonic plague. It was ably described by Guy de Chauliac, Boccaccio and Simon de Covino. The epidemic had at least this good effect, that it led the Venetian Republic to appoint three guardians of public health and to make the first quarantine of infected areas, so called because it lasted forty days (quaranta giorni); while, in other cities, there were plague ordinances and private personal directions (Pests- schriften), pesthouses and other hygienic improvements. The other great scourge of the Middle Ages was syphilis, which broke out in epidemic form at the siege of Naples in 1495, and was supposed to have been communicated to the French invaders by the Spanish occupants, who got it (modern authorities conjecture) from Columbus’s sailors, a visitation from the New World. That sporadic syphilis existed in antiquity and even in prehistoric times is quite within the range of probability, but never before had it taken on such a virulent aspect as about the time of the supposed Neapolitan epidemic of 1495-96, and, if Columbian in origin, its malignancy was perhaps the usual result of the contact of civilized and primitive races, as in the “Black Lion” of the Peninsular Wars, or the syphilis of Mexico, Japan, and the South Seas. Syphilis is first mentioned in the following works, recently printed in facsimile by Professor Karl Sudhoff i1 1. The Edict against Blasphemers (Gotteslasterer-Edikt) of Emperor Maxi¬ milian I, issued August 7, 1495. 2. The Vaticinium or “astrological vision” of the Frisian poet-physician Theodoricus Ulsenius (Dietrich Uelzen), printed at Nuremberg August 1, 1496, with a colored print of a syphilitic by Albrecht Diirer. (Reprinted at Augsburg by Johann Froschauer, 1496.) 3. The “Eulogium,” a poem by Sebastian Brant, printed in September, 1496, by Joh. Bergmann von Olpe at Basel. 4. The “Tractatus de pestilentiali Scorra” (Augsburg, Hans Schauer, October 18, 1496), and “Ein hubscher Tractat von dem Ursprung des Bosen Franzos” (Augsburg, Hans Schauer, December 17, 1496), the first of these reprinted three times at Nuremberg, Cologne, and Leipzig (1496), and the lat¬ ter once at Nuremberg early in 1497. 5. The “Enarratio Satyrica,” a poem of the Veronese patrician, Giorgio Sommariva, printed at Venice in December, 1496. 6. The “Concilium breve contra malas pustulas” of Konrad Schellig (Schelling), physician to the Elector Palatine (printed at Heidelberg in 1496). 7. Four prayers, one to St. Minus (Nuremberg, 1496), one to St. Dionysius (Nuremberg, 1496), one printed at Vienna, 1497, and one in low German of un¬ certain date. 8. A letter from Barcelona (1495) by Nicolo Scillacio of Messina, printed in his “Opuscula,” March 9, 1496, at Pavia showing that, in June, 1495, syph- 1 Karl Sudhoff: Graphische und typographische Erstlinge der Syphilis- literatur, Leipzig, 1912. This work should be read by every one who wishes to know the most recent views of the subject as controlled by first-hand in¬ vestigation (with typographic and photographic reproduction) of the original texts and documents. Sudhoff has continued these investigations in “Aus der Fruhgeschichte der Syphilis” (Stud. z. Gesch. d. Med., Hft. 9), Leipzig, 1912.