Even to-day medical men are divided in their own opinions on the origin of syphilis, some believing that it was{136} developed spontaneously in Europe toward the close of the sixteenth century, others that it was imported from the New World, others that it had a most ancient origin, and others yet that it represented a degenerated form of leprosy. Certain it is that syphilis appeared almost simultaneously in all parts of Europe,--at Bologna, Halle, Brunswick, in Lombardy, Apulia, Auvergne, and so on. Léonicenus attributed this sudden outbreak to an extraordinary inundation that occurred in all parts of Italy toward the close of the fourteenth century, and supported his views with the authority of Hippocrates and Galen. Others attributed it to astrological influence; while still others regarded it as a scourge of God with which to punish men and turn them away from unbridled libertinism, Fallopius thought venereal disease was engendered by the poison which the perfidious Neapolitans had thrown into the wells from which the French drew their water. These wild views simply indicate the spirit of the age. Oviedo published in 1545 a history of the West Indies, in which he states that syphilis originated in America. He held that when Columbus returned from his second expedition to the New World, in 1496, his men enlisted under Gonsalvo de Cordova to go and fight the French, who had invaded the Kingdom of Naples, and that they communicated to the French and Neapolitans the disease which they had brought from San Domingo. Unhappily for his veracity, it is certain that syphilis broke out in Naples at least two years before the arrival of the Spanish fleet. It is equally certain that at none of the points at which Columbus touched on his return from his first expedition was there any manifestation of syphilis for years. At this time the venereal disease, so-called, included those conditions which we now differentiate under the names of syphilis, chancroid, and gonorrhoea,--a confusion of diseases{138} which persisted even up to the time of John Hunter. It is worth while to publish this fact, since writers of two or three hundred years ago may not have meant by the term "syphilis" just what we would mean to-day. Without going into this question here, it is enough to say that one who reads intelligently may see in the Sacred Scriptures unmistakable allusions to this disease. If the statements of David, as contained in the Psalms, are reliable, he was himself a serious sufferer from it. The ancient Greek and Arabian physicians make mention of lesions which could only be attributed to this disease; and the Latin satirists, like Horace and Juvenal, describe symptoms of a certain kind as being the fruit only of shameful practices. [Illustration: 0157]