If we turn now from these discussions to the statements of the ancient Physicians themselves, there are two different ways in which we may regard them ourselves and present them to the reader’s eyes. _Either_ we put down consecutively everything that has been said by one and the same Author and examine each single datum we owe to him by itself, _or_ we bring together the data given by different writers on one and the same subject, and then compare these one with another. The first way, the one generally followed by historians of Venereal disease hitherto, gives us it is true the general results of the knowledge possessed by the several writers on the different forms of Venereal disease; but, seeing on the one hand we do not in most instances actually possess all the works of our Author, while on the other even when we do, we are not justified in looking upon his report as embodying a _résumé_ of all the knowledge of his time, the advantages of such a way of dealing with the subject are on the whole but slight, while it has the _dis_advantage of rendering considerably more difficult the general survey of the information possessed by Antiquity as to Venereal disease, which nevertheless is really our immediate and capital concern, and cannot fail moreover to occasion a host of contradictions. The second way not only relieves us from this disadvantage, but also ensures us that general Survey which is peculiarly necessary, and to the absence of which the circumstance is chiefly to be ascribed that it has been possible hitherto to convince the opponents of the antiquity of Venereal disease only in the most incomplete manner of its actual existence in those times at all, as the exposition of the contrary view, in itself incomplete, was bound in its fragmentary presentment to seem even more incomplete still. Of course, in following the second way of exposition, there is an unavoidable dislocation of the data communicated by each individual writer, but this is a thing of but little moment, more particularly as its inconvenience is minimised by our giving the passages, when quoted for the first time, _in extenso_, so as to have on subsequent occasions merely to refer back to them. Again the want of a clear marking of dates, a point undoubtedly of great importance in historical researches, is readily obviated by our laying down the available fixed points of our chronology in the general Survey that forms a necessary conclusion to our exposition.