Syphilis sive morbus humanus : a rationalization of yaws, so-called, for scientists and laymen interested in the damage to man from venereal diseases / Charles S. Butler.

  • Butler, Charles S. (Charles St. John), 1875-1944.
Date:
1936
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Syphilis sive morbus humanus : a rationalization of yaws, so-called, for scientists and laymen interested in the damage to man from venereal diseases / Charles S. Butler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    B.C., to Matt. VIII. 2, Mark I. 40, and Luke V. 12, leprosy and lepers are spoken of scores of times. The time span between these writings was 1525 (600) years or almost 4/ 5 (1/3)1 of the period of the Chris¬ tian era during which the medicine, diagnosis, sanita¬ tion and treatment of Bible times was in full effect among all Christian peoples. In other words, physi¬ cians practicad biblical medicine up to the beginning of the 16th Century and a close approximation to it up to the decade 1840—1850, when anaesthesia was perfected which discovery did away with limits to medical progress. In the so-called Mosaic Law of the 13 th Chapter of Leviticus, we cannot recognize clearly any one disease. True, leprosy was undoubtedly part of it but there was more than this. At least five diseases are included in this chapter: (1) true leprosy, (2) psoriasis, (3) types of tinea and certainly sycosis barbae, (4) syphilis (general eruption, alopecia) “And if there be in the bald head or bald forhead (eyebrows?) a white reddish sore; it is a ^leprosy sprung up in his bald head or bald forhead. Lev. XIII. 42. This might easily be the corona veneris of lues, (5) lupus vulgaris and other types of tuberculo¬ sis of the skin, (6) leishmaniasis of the skin, (7) itch, etc.—We learn from this chapter also that such dis¬ eases were up to the priests to cure, not the doctors. This practice extended through the Middle Ages. Lev. XIII shows that those who were “unclean,” i.e., suffering from mutilating diseases, had to put a cloth over their upper lip (Lev. XIII. 45) (was this to pre¬ vent spraying?) and cry unclean when being ap¬ proached. The Mosaic Law shows that the ancients vaguely sensed the idea that clothing might cause infection in others. Cleansing and burning were alternatives here. Now the history of leprosy as related in the Handbook of Geographical and His-