Medicine in the Middle Ages: Extracts from "Le Moyen Age Medical" by Dr. Edmond Dupouy; translated by T. C. MinorDupouy, Edmond
History
Medicine in the Middle Ages: Extracts from "Le Moyen Age Medical" by Dr. Edmond Dupouy; translated by T. C. Minor
Dupouy, Edmond
Medicine, Medieval
_This document dates back 200 years before the discovery of America_,
and is duly authenticated by the testimony of Guillaume Saliceti,
a physician and Italian priest of the thirteenth century. “When a
man has received a corruption of the penis, after having cohabited
with an obscene woman or for other cause, there comes a tumor in the
groin.”[32] And some years after Lanfranc, a student of Salicetis,
wrote, in his turn, in his _Parva Cyrurgia_, that “buboes appear
following ulcers on the penis.” His description of chancres and other
venereal accidents is very remarkable.
Another writer of the thirteenth century, Michel Scott, a Scotch
physician, alchemist, and philosopher, who lived in France and Germany
for many years, says in one of his numerous works:[33] “Women become
livid and have discharges. If a woman is in such a condition and a
man cohabit with her his penis is easily diseased, as we often see in
adolescents who, ignorant of this fact, often contract a sore organ or
are attacked by leprosy. It is also well to know that if a discharge
exist at the epoch of conception, the fetus is more or less diseased,
and in this case a man must abstain from all connection, and the woman
should resist sexual advances, if she have foresight.”
This passage leaves no possible doubt as to the existence of
blenorrhagia with the discharge and as to the presence of an hereditary
syphilitic diathesis, for if the author gives the last-mentioned the
name of leprosy it is only for the reason that at this period no
positive term was in use to designate venereal diseases,[34] which were
confounded with leprosy, with or without reason, the former only being,
perhaps, a transformation of the latter.
About a century later, that is to say, on August 8th, 1347, Queen
Jeanne of Naples, Countess of Provence, sent to Avignon the statutes
relating to the establishment of houses of prostitution in that city.
Article IV. of this law regulated police measures in the following
terms: “The Queen ordains that every Saturday the bailiff and a
barber deputed by the Councilmen shall visit every debauched girl in
the place, and if they find any one who has the disease arising from
venery, that such a one may be separated from the other girls and
lodged apart, to the end that no one may have commerce with her, and
that the young may thus avoid contracting disease.”[35]
These statutes were first made known by Astruc,[36] and have been
inserted without reserve by Grisolle in his _Traite de Pathologie
Interne_; also by Cazenave in his _Traite des Syphilides_; but Jules
Courtet, and after him Rabutaux and Anglada, have considered these
documents as somewhat apocryphal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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