The few really learned Physicians of the end of XVth. Century and beginning of the XVIth. took as the theme of their study not Nature but rather the medical Writings of the Greeks and Arabians, a field that had long been left unappropriated by them, and all were far too firmly convinced, that _Hippocrates_, and still more _Galen_ and _Avicenna_ had already included in their Works everything that could ever be the subject of scientific treatment at any given time. Attention was concentrated upon the Skin Affection that was the predominant form at first, and this was naturally enough taken for a kind of Leprosy, and called sometimes Elephantiasis (_Seb. Aquilanus_, _Phil. Beroaldus_), sometimes “Formica” (_Schellig_, _Cumanus_, _Gilinus_, _Leonicenus_, _Steber_), by others “Saphat” (_J. Widmann_, _Nat. Montesaurus_, _Jul. Tanus_, _Jo. de Fogueda_, _Sim. Pistor_). Hence the view advanced subsequently by _Sydenham_, _Haller_, _Plenk_, _Thierry_, _Haward_, and held for a time by _Sprengel_, that the original form of the Venereal Disease was the “Yaws” or “Piana”, and consequently that Africa must be assigned as the original home of the disease; and in this way the Moors also were brought in as part of the concatenation. Later on, when the conviction grew up that the beginning of the Disease consists in local affections of the genital organs, it was easy to show that these had always been in existence from the most ancient times. But as no direct information on the relation between affections of the Genitals and Skin-disease was to be found in the earlier Writers, enquirers were driven to the supposition, that Syphilitic affections of the Skin had been confounded by the Ancients with Leprosy.