The Plague of Lust, Vol. 1 (of 2): Being a History of Venereal Disease in Classical AntiquityRosenbaum, Julius
History
The Plague of Lust, Vol. 1 (of 2): Being a History of Venereal Disease in Classical Antiquity
Rosenbaum, Julius
Sexually transmitted diseases -- History
To return for a moment to the Medical and Anthropological aspects
of the Work. Perhaps no single branch of Scientific Enquiry has
made such noteworthy strides of late years as Anthropology, and in
particular the special Department of that Science devoted to morbid
and anomalous manifestations of the sexual appetite,—unnatural lusts,
sensual aberrations, sexual inversions, and all the rest. The subject,
no doubt, is repulsive, but it is none the less profoundly important
from the scientific side, in connexion both with the general advance
of our knowledge of Mankind, and with the special Study of Insanity
and Madness, as well as from the humanitarian point of view as giving
material for the eventual alleviation of many of these manifestations
of Mental Disease. Out of a host of names, it is only necessary to
mention two, those of Lombroso and Krafft-Ebing, to demonstrate the
high place these investigations have vindicated for themselves among
the scientific triumphs of the Century that has just closed. On this
side the _Geschichte der Lustseuche_ is of the highest importance,
supplying as it does innumerable instances of those very phaenomena of
morbid sexual perversions that constitute the subject matter of this
rapidly progressive branch of Science, one likely in the near future to
prove of infinite benefit to afflicted humanity.
Of the Author personally there is no need to say much, nor indeed
is there much to be said. His life was quiet and uneventful, as a
Scholar’s and Savant’s should be. After holding a Professorship at
Berlin, he was summoned to fill a similar post at the University of
Halle, where he succeeded to the Chair left vacant by the death of the
celebrated Dr. Baumgarten-Crusius; and it was here that he completed
his great Work,—in spite of difficulties and lack of books, which he
naïvely and rather pathetically laments in his Preface. Halle had
already been made illustrious by an earlier and even more distinguished
worker in the same field, the famous Sprengel (died March 15, 1833),
author of a masterly _History of Medicine_ and many other professional
works; and with a characteristic touch of Teutonic sentimentality
our Author dates the Preface to his own _Geschichte_ on Sprengel’s
birth-day.
A by no means unimportant feature of Dr. Rosenbaum’s book, and one
according well with his patient and laborious methods, is the very
extensive and valuable Bibliography, which will be found at the end of
the Work. This embraces almost everything that has been written on the
subject in all languages, and should prove of inestimable service to
the serious student.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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