Celsus prefaces what he says on the subject of this class of maladies with an apology. Nothing but a sense of duty has led him to allude to matters so delicate; but he feels that he ought not to allow his country to lose the benefit of his experience, and he conceives it to be "desirable to disseminate among the people some medical principles with regard to a class of diseases which are never revealed to any one." After this apology, he proceeds to speak of a disease which he calls _inflammatio colis_, which seems to have borne a striking analogy to the modern _Phymosis_. It has been supposed that the _Elephantiasis_, which he describes at length, was also of a syphilitic character; and the symptoms detailed by Aretous, who wrote in the latter half of the first century, certainly remind the reader of secondary syphilis; but the best opinion of to-day appears to be that the diseases are distinct and unconnected. Women afflicted with secret diseases were called _aucunnuentæ_, which explains itself. They prayed to Juno Fluonia for relief, and used the _aster atticus_ by way of medicine. The Greek term for this herb being _Bonbornion_, which the Romans converted into _Bubonium_, that word came to be applied to the disease for which it was given, whether in the case of females or males. Modern science has obtained thence the term Bubo. The Romans said of a female who communicated a disease to a man, _Hæc te imbubinat_.[141] We find, moreover, in the later writers, allusions to the _morbus campanus_, the _clazomenæ_, the _rubigo_, etc., which were all secret diseases of a type, if not syphilitic, strongly resembling it. It must be admitted, however, that no passage in the ancient writers directly ascribes these diseases to commerce with prostitutes. Roman doctors declined to treat secret diseases. They were called by the generic term _morbus indecens_, and it was considered unbecoming to confess to them or to treat them. Rich men owned a slave doctor who was in the confidence of the family, and to whom such delicate secrets would naturally be confided. But the mass of the people were restrained by shame from communicating their misfortunes; as was the case among the Jews, the unhappy patient was driven to seclusion as the only remedy. However cruel and senseless this practice may have been as regarded the sufferer, it was of service to the people, as it prevented, in some degree, the spread of contagion.