When such was the scandalous life led by some of the clergy, we cannot wonder that, before the introduction of syphilis, Rabelais (himself at one time a monk) should apply to the gonorrhœal disease the very significant term of “rhume ecclesiastique;” or that, after the appearance of syphilis, this latter and greater malady should have spread speedily among all ranks, down from the clergy to the laity, and from the king to the churl, and should have become diffused by such stealthy but rapid steps over the countries of Europe, as to have at first been mistaken for a malady spreading itself, not by impure intercourse, but by general epidemic influences. And when we advert to the existing state of society in that age, and couple it with such notices as we have found in the Aberdeen records, we may surely (in despite of all that has been written to the contrary, both in ancient and modern times) reasonably doubt whether the laws regulating the propagation of syphilis in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were in any degree different from what we know them to be in the nineteenth century. The Aberdeen edict shows that three hundred and sixty odd years ago, or in 1497, the common mode of infection of the disease was precisely the same as all acknowledge it to be at the present day. FOOTNOTES: [1] From the _Edinburgh Med. and Surg. Journal_, No. 149. [2] _Study of Medicine_, vol. i. pref. p. xxiii. [3] See some learned notices regarding this strange species of mania (the wolf-madness or wehrwolf of the Germans) in Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_ (edit. of 1804), vol. i. p. 13, and Heinrich Hase’s late work on the _Public and Private Life of the Ancient Greeks_, p. 17. Ploucquet, in his _Literatura Medica_, gives references to a number of articles and monographs on the subject under the word “Lycanthropia,” vol. i. p. 510. [4] See particularly the Canon De Leprosis of Pope Alexander III. in the _Monasticon Anglicanum_, tom. ii. p. 365; and Semler’s _Historiæ Ecclesiasticæ Selecta Capita_, tom. iii. p. 170. [5] The terms employed by Matthew Paris are quite precise. “Habent insuper _Templarii_ in Christianitate novem millia Maneriorum; _Hospitalarii_ vero novemdecim.” _Anglor. Historia Major_ (ed. of 1644), p. 417. In referring to the subject under the word “Leprosaria,” Ducange states, “Dominus Matthæus Paris, _Hist. Angl._ p. 63, affirmat suo tempore fuisse Leprosarias 1900 (19,000?) in toto orbe Christiano.” See his _Glossarium, Med. et Inf. Latinitatis_, tom. iv. p. 126. At p. 63 of the Appendix to Paris, the institution of one hospital at St. Alban’s is referred to; but neither here nor elsewhere in his work can I find any allusion whatever to the existing number of leper hospitals in England, or in Christendom in general. [6] Velley, Villaret et Garnier, _Histoire de France_, tom. ii. (ed. of 1770), p. 291. [7] Velley, etc., _Histoire_, ii. p. 292.