However it may perhaps be suggested that, although the ancient Physicians did not feel themselves obliged to make any mention of sexual intercourse as cause of affections of the genitals, they cannot for all that have failed to notice the phænomena of infection. To say nothing of the fact that in no small proportion of instances affections of the genitals under the favouring conditions previously described did not as a matter of fact arise through infection, but actually in a sense spontaneously,[291] and further that to this day we possess absolutely no criterion to distinguish such diseases arising in this way,—for it is only superficial and indolent observers that deny the possibility of such origination altogether,—apart from all this, the view which the Ancients took as a whole of the general question of infection was one in the highest degree inadequate. For this state of things, as _Heyne_[292] long ago pointed out, the τὸ θεῖον (the divine element), or in other words the prevalent opinion that infectious diseases were an infliction of the offended deity, is mainly responsible. In these very diseases of the genitals, we have in fact seen how they were ascribed to the wrath of Dionysus and Priapus; and how long such ideas lasted, and how intimately they were interwoven with the life of the people, may be gauged by the circumstance that even the Christian Fathers themselves took every pains and used every effort to maintain them. Now is it really in any way reasonable to expect the physicians of those times to have so completely extricated themselves from the predominant range of ideas? and have we any right to abuse them for their beliefs at the present moment, when in our own day there are to be found not a few physicians who deny absolutely the contagiousness of Venereal disease under its different forms? All the old practitioners could do was to draw attention to the fact that underlying the τὸ θεῖον there lurked some natural cause, and this view Hippocrates did actually maintain in his writings. As to the indicative signs of this cause perceptible by the senses, as to the material substance, whatever it may be, that communicates infection, into all this they could hardly be expected to initiate investigations,[293] deficient as they were in every sort of aid and assistance for the task. For I ask, have we, in spite of all our researches, thus far attained to any satisfactory and certain results? Could the Anti-Contagionists ever have come forward at all, if we had been successful in demonstrating the contagion to be perceptible to the senses?