A Treatise on venereal diseases / by A. Vidal, (de Cassis,), tr., with annotations by George C. Blackman.

  • Vidal, Auguste-Théodore, 1803-1856.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A Treatise on venereal diseases / by A. Vidal, (de Cassis,), tr., with annotations by George C. Blackman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library, Emory University.

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    In ancient times, everything was regarded as a result, and variety, of inflammation; a specific cause was unknown, and the connection of the different symptoms was not recognized. How- ever, one fact, that of contagion, known to the most eminent, should have aroused the attention of the ancients; thus, Galen, with his genius, traced blennorrhagia to contagion, and his fol- lowers, in this as in other matters, adopted the opinions of their leader. As we depart from antiquity the elements of the disease become more distinct, and so connected as to constitute the vene- real disease with its special forms. Thus the Arabs and the Arabists are very instructive in a historical point of view; Avicenna and Areteus describe a peculiar disease of the throat, which the latter calls the Egyptian disease, and supposed it to be confined to young people. The fact of its being contagious is distinctly noticed, and William of Salicet, Lanfranc, and B. Gordon had some idea of a specific cause: they note the deplorable consequences of carnal connection with unclean females, affected with discharges which even then they designated as virulent, (virulentes;) they refer to inguinal abscesses, genuine buboes having their starting point, the penis, and marked the cutaneous eruptions as constitu- tional affections, classing them with lepra. These abscesses were noticed not only as cold or hot, and distinct from their cause, but as having their starting point on the penis. Thus, we find this remarkable passage in William of Salicet; And the bubo occurs when a man has a disease of the penis from connection with an unclean woman, or from every other cause, which gives rise to an accumulation of corruption in this organ, which corruption being unable to find an exit, returns to the groins, according to that law of afiinity which these parts have with the infected organ. Lan- franc, who was a pupil of William, speaks of abscesses in the groin that follow ulcers on the penis: /Scepe provenit aposthema in inguine propter ulcera virgce, proptera quod est decensus humorum ad ilia loca* Further, Lanfranc advises a method of prevention, which I will mention when I discuss the subject of prophylaxis. I will add, that even before the fifteenth century there existed, as for example in London, regulations of medical police for certain houses of prostitution. There can then be no doubt of the existence, in antiquity, of local non-virulent venereal diseases, and there is strong presump- tive evidence also, that there were those of a specific nature, which produced both local and constitutional symptoms. Thus, it is very probable, that more than one syphiloid affection might have been found in that confused mass of cutaneous diseases, and among those lepers so often noticed among the ancients, and which have not yet disappeared, as is maintained by the hygienists. What led to the use of mercury after the epidemic of the fifteenth century ? It was the success obtained in the earlier ages, when it was em- ployed for the cure of those diseases which were confounded with lepra, and among which were the syphilides. Is this not another * Pract. III., doctr. II., cap. IL