Lastly to all these reasons was added further the _mildness and absence of danger characterizing the disease_ itself, at any rate in the majority of instances,—as proved in our earlier investigations. To our own day genuine amateurs of Love, thanks to those who supply “advice, direction and information” on these subjects, endeavour as a rule, at any rate in the earlier stages, to cure without assistance the wounds received in the fight. This was equally so in Antiquity, as the following significant passage of _Galen_[279] shows: “This is pretty well all I have to say at present as to ephemeral fevers. For _patients who have contracted fever consequent upon a bubo, do not consult physicians as to what they must do; but after first treating the ulcer which occasioned the bubo and then the bubo itself_, bathe after the abatement of the severity of the attack. After that if any one says a word as to the “diatriton” (fast till the third day), all laugh and declare him a precisian: I suppose because they are of the opinion that nothing must be resigned to nature that is not invariably there.” We know quite well that the Ancients called all glandular swellings buboes, and that they were perfectly well acquainted[280] with those glandular swellings in the arm-pits and the groin which follow upon ulcers of the fingers and toes; but this in no way justifies us in referring the above passage, which is certainly written in a general sense, _solely_ to suchlike buboes and not equally to those in the soft tissues; more particularly as _Galen_, in the place where he is dealing expressly with the treatment of buboes and the phlegmonous affections preceding them and occasioning ulcers (loco citato p. 881), explicitly mentions phlegmonous symptoms as κατὰ αἰδοῖον (affecting the privates) and γυναικὶ κατὰ μήτραν ἢ αἰδοῖον (in women affecting womb and privates),—loco citato p. 893. Hence we think ourselves justified in drawing attention to the passage as containing an indication of the reason why ulcers of the genital organs pursued a milder course and admitted of an easier cure in Antiquity, because the _ephemera_ evidently facilitated the assimilation and elimination of the contagion, this taking place either at the point primarily attacked, or else occurring because it (the ephemeral fever) led to an enhanced activity of the cutaneous glands by provoking an exanthematous eruption. § 39.