The Plague of Lust, Vol. 2 (of 2): Being a History of Venereal Disease in Classical AntiquityRosenbaum, Julius
History
The Plague of Lust, Vol. 2 (of 2): Being a History of Venereal Disease in Classical Antiquity
Rosenbaum, Julius
Sexually transmitted diseases -- History
This diagnostic eruption again points to another fact, viz. that the
leprosy must have had its seat in a part of the body, the cutaneous
glands of which stand in a relation of lively sympathy with those of
the skin generally, and this according to modern experience can only
be the cutaneous glands of the genital organs. Sometimes inoculation
with cow-pox lymph brings out a general eruption of the whole skin,
but this circumstance cannot well be made pertinent here, as really
and truly the lymph is a resultant product of a feverish affection,
and therefore its innate tendency is towards a reproduction of itself
under circumstances of feverish stimulation, and to set the whole
organism, and consequently the whole cutaneous glandular system, in a
state of enhanced activity. How the diagnostic eruption comes about
may be gathered from the statement of the case given just above; while
the passage quoted from _von Roeser’s_ Work will explain the rest.
Still for the present this much may suffice to put the expert reader
in a position to test our conjecture,—for indeed so far it makes no
profession to be more than a conjecture. Supposing it found tenable,
then the further consequences that cannot but grow from it for the
elucidation of the Chapter in discussion may be readily developed. On
the other hand, if it is devoid of justification, it would be quite
useless further to elaborate a hypothesis, plunging a subject obscure
enough without this in even deeper darkness. Further than this we
only need to mention that _Hensler_ and others hold _mentagra_ to be
indicated in the bald chin and scurfy (scall) chin of Leviticus (XIII.
29 sqq.), which if they are right would merely be another point in
favour of our view.
Finally there can hardly be any need for us to observe that we have no
idea of holding leprosy in general to be a consequence of excesses;
on the contrary we believe, to return to the problem we started with
at the beginning of this Section, that we are bound to agree to the
opinion first explicitly laid down by _Becket_[184], viz. _that under
the widely comprehensive notion of Leprosy were included other forms
of skin-diseases owing their existence to some previous affection of
the genital organs_,—in precisely the same way as this happened in the
Middle Ages, and as may be the case occasionally even at the present
day.
§ 31.
What precise influence Climate exerted on the form taken and course run
by affections of the genital organs _in Greece and Italy_, can be only
approximately laid down, as the information supplied by Physicians,
though ample in quantity, mostly leaves the point indefinite as to
where the observations were made, whether in Asia Minor and Egypt
(Alexandria), or in Greece and Italy. The last named country indeed
was, as is well known, almost entirely devoid of independent native
medical Writers.
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