When treating of this subject, and when speaking of both the usual mode of the infection of syphilis and its primary local symptoms generally escaping notice at the era of the first appearance of the disease, Swediaur observes,—“It is worthy of remark, that although many authors, since the year 1500, make mention of the genital organs, and say that syphilis may more generally (ut plurimum) be communicated by coition; not one before that time (1500) points out the (primary) affection as essential or characteristic of the disease. All (Swediaur adds) look upon it as a disease pestilential and contagious without coition, and even without any direct contact” (vol. i. p. 36). The observations of Astruc and Girtanner, and other authors on this point, are nearly to the same effect. In relation to this question, that of the actual mode and means of propagation of syphilis, the edict of Aberdeen, in 1497, is particularly remarkable and interesting, and most fully maintains the character of the capital of the north for that native shrewdness and sagacity which the poet Dunbar long ago solemnly assigned to it. We have just now referred to Swediaur, etc., stating that up to 1500 all European writers looked upon syphilis as spreading, pestilentially and contagiously, without coition. Three years earlier, the aldermen and town-council of Aberdeen seem to have arrived at more just ideas of its laws of propagation, and to have distinctly suspected impure sexual intercourse as the mode of communication of the malady. This seems to be fully borne out by their ordering, “for the eschewing of the infirmitey,” that (to use the words of the edict) “all licht weman be chargit and ordanit to desist fra thar syne of venerie;” and we have the usual glowing and earnest threat of the application of the actual cautery, or “ane key of het yrne (hot iron) to thair chekis,” in case of disobedience. The later Aberdeen edicts of 1507, which we have already quoted at length, show, however, that the rulers of the burgh had been subsequently led to adopt the erroneous idea of the leading authorities of the day, that the disease might be transmitted also in the way of common contagions, and even, perhaps, by the medium of a third person.