Like the numerous list of contemporary authors and physicians quoted by Astruc, Grüner, and Weatherhead, the Aberdeen edict speaks of syphilis in the last years of the fifteenth century as a disease hitherto unknown, “the infirmity come out of France and foreign parts.” The Edinburgh edict mentions it as “_a_ contagious disease callit the grandgore.” If it had been previously known, the definite, and not the indefinite, article would have, in all probability, been employed. And if such a disease had previously existed on the continent of Europe, there is every reason to believe that it would have also existed and been known in Britain. Besides, this reasoning certainly admits of being inverted and changed, in so far that we may probably lay it down with equal justice, that if the disease was new, as it would appear to have been, in Scotland at that time, it was in all probability new also to the other kingdoms of Europe. _2d Corollary._—But if syphilis was thus new in Britain in the end of the fifteenth century, this shows that it is a species of disease distinct and different alike—1st, from gonorrhœa, and, 2d, from Greek leprosy, with both of which maladies it has, as is now well known, been occasionally confounded; for both these maladies existed, and were abundantly recognised, in this, as in other countries, long before the era of the introduction of syphilis. Gonorrhœa was early distinguished by English authors under the name of “burning,” or “brenning” (_ardor urinæ_, _arsura_, etc.) Thus, Andrew Borde, in his “_Breviary of Health_,” 1546, speaks of it as the “burning of an harlotte.” “Burning of harlottes” is also mentioned in Bulleyn’s _Bulwark of Defence_, 1562. But it is under this same name that reference is made to the same disease in one of the ordinances enacted about 1430, for the better regulation of the eighteen brothels that stood for centuries on the Bankside in Southwark, under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester. At the above date it was decreed that “no stewholder keep noo woman wythin his hous that hath any sickness of brenning.”[615] This statute was enacted half-a-century before the introduction of syphilis in England; and nearly a century previously, gonorrhœa had been accurately described, among others, by John Arden, surgeon to Richard II., who, writing about 1380, gave a correct summary of the symptoms, pathology, and treatment of this malady. In an old English medical poem, evidently written not later than the last part of the fourteenth century, and published lately by Mr. Stephens of Copenhagen, there is a receipt for “all maner brenninge” (line 294); and then follows a series of cures (line 510, etc.)— “if ye verge be brente As man of woman may so be schente, Thorow cas yᵗ womā may be his bote Off qwom his sekenesse be gan ye rote.”[616]