With regard to _gonorrhœa in women_, it is all but impossible to arrive at any accurate knowledge of what the Ancient Physicians knew concerning it. The reason of this is that the views held as to the effect of deteriorated menstrual blood and of the ῥοῦς γυναικεῖος (female discharge), by means of which the whole body was supposed to purge itself of evil humours,[327] absolutely precluded the possibility of any unprejudiced observation, in precisely the same way as down to quite modern times the _fluor albus_ (white flux, blennorrhœa) conditioned the extremely imperfect knowledge possessed by the faculty of female gonorrhœa. We purpose to leave over the inquiry into the points which differentiate the two (male and female gonorrhœa) to another opportunity; and will only note here that gonorrhœa in women, strictly so called, was by no means utterly unknown,—in fact there is no doubt whatever as to its being distinguished from the ῥοῦς γυναικεῖος (female discharge), as is shown by the passage of _Galen_ quoted above, and still more clearly by _Aretaeus_,[328] who speaks of γονόῤῥοια γυναικεῖα (female gonorrhœa) distinctly as ἄλλος ῥόος λευκὸς, another species of white flux. Whether perhaps this knowledge was first accumulated at the epoch of Tiberius and his fellows cannot indeed be positively determined; but certainly the word ἐλέξαμεν (we have named it) of the text of Aretaeus may very well leave room for such a conjecture, and as a matter of fact Aretaeus would appear to have lived under Domitian, and was therefore a contemporary of Martial’s! 2. Ulcers and Caruncles in the Urethra. We have already seen from Hippocrates, Celsus and Galen that the ancient Physicians had observed the inflammation and subsequent matteration of the small mucous glands of the urethra evidenced by the symptoms of painful micturition, and seeing that mere tenesmus, as well as dysentery, are denominated ἑλκώσις (ulceration) by them, it is by no means improbable that many a urethral ulcer and many a case of gonorrhœa may have been treated under the name of ischuria (retention of urine). This is the more likely, as we learn from a passage of _Celsus_[329], one usually misinterpreted in several respects, that the urethral discharge was explained as due to an extension of the ulcer to the spermatic cords (_vasa deferentia_,—seed-bringing vessels). Yet further confirmation is afforded by a passage of _Actuarius_,[330] already cited by Simon, and our own conjecture expressed on a previous page thus justified.