The expression _foedo cutis furfure_ (with a horrible scurf of the skin) appears to have led a number of authors to believe that this was the capital characteristic of the complaint, and that the distinction between λιχὴν and λείχην was merely one of degree. This view was advocated in particular by _Willian_[102], who ascribes it also to _Paulus Aegineta_[103] as well as to _Oribasius_[104] though both of these authors limit themselves to saying that the moderately siccative remedies are of no benefit in λείχην ἄγριος (malignant lichen), whereas the more violent ones aggravate it, and that for this reason it was called ἄγριος. Hence Willian’s _Lichen agrius_ (malignant lichen) has nothing in common with the _lichen_ of the Greeks and Romans but the mere name, for it follows clearly from the words _foediore cicatrice_ (with a more horrible scar) that occur a little further down in _Pliny_, that a process of skinning over by ulceration was part of the disease, and did not owe its existence solely to the caustic remedies employed. The _immunity of women_[105] equally admits of easy explanation, for in the first place women were not likely to have readily conceived the idea of acting after the manner of a _cunnilingue_[106], and even if _fellation_ is admitted to be an occasionally concurrent cause of _mentagra_, still it would seem, as already stated, to supervene much less often as a consequence of the latter vice; while in cases where it does, it is of a milder form and it is rather the internal parts of the mouth that are imperilled. Besides, it is to be remembered that women generally speaking suffer less frequently from pustulous disorders of the cutaneous glands affecting the face than men do, as is well seen at the present day with Acne. In the parts neighbouring on the genitals this is exactly reversed. Still this immunity of women must not be insisted on too far, as those persons of the female sex who used to practise _fellation_, the Summoenianae (women of the suburbs) lay too completely outside the range of _Pliny’s_ observation. As to the _servi_ (slaves) and _Plebs humilis_ (Commons of humble station), these were surely unlikely, however little restraint they may have put on their sensual appetites, to have readily fallen into suchlike forms of vice,—forms which spring as a rule from the brain of unoccupied, rich idlers. We have only to appeal to modern experience to substantiate this. How many individuals of the lowest and middle classes have the records of forensic medicine to show as having been paederasts and so on? Wild aberrations in morals have at no period begun with the common man! So we see it was the Proceres (Nobles) who were in an especial degree attacked by the _mentagra_.