Whether they were of ancient date--whether the "shameful diseases" which have been mentioned in the chapter devoted to prostitution at Rome were the same as the modern syphilis--may be decided by the reader. It will suffice here to say that, throughout the Middle Ages, a species of disease, termed sometimes leprosy, sometimes _pudendagra_, appears to have prevailed in France as in other European countries, and to have chosen for its chief seat the organs of generation. It was not, however, till the close of the fifteenth century that public attention began to be generally directed to the subject of sexual disease. We shall briefly enumerate the earliest notices of its appearance. When Charles VIII. entered Naples in 1495, he found the city suffering from a plague (syphilis) to which the prejudice of the natives gave the name of "French malady." Italy, said the writers of the day, was attacked simultaneously by the French army and this new disease.[198] Most of the Italian writers accuse the French of its introduction. Benevenis, however, says they got it from the Spaniards, and Guicciardini candidly admits that his countrymen were the real propagators of the malady. German physicians likewise traced its origin to Naples, and placed it about the year 1493,[199] ascribing it to an untoward planetary conjunction. The disease appeared at Barcelona in 1493, and in other parts of Spain in the following year.[200] But sixty years before, in 1430, public regulations had been made in London to prevent the admission of persons attacked with a disease very similar to syphilis into houses of prostitution, and requiring the police to keep constant watch over such as should show symptoms of this _infirmitas nefanda_.[201] The first authentic allusion to the disease in France is the ordinance of the Parliament of Paris, dated 1497, ordering all persons attacked by the "large pox" to vacate the city within twenty-four hours, and not to return till they were cured; providing a sort of hospital for those who can not move; and appointing agents to bestow four _sols parisis_ on the exiles to pay for their journey.[202] This ordinance alludes to the disease having been prevalent for two years. It may therefore be taken for granted that, whether syphilitic diseases had existed before or not, they prevailed to a very alarming extent throughout Europe at the close of the fifteenth century.