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
Before quitting the subject of the influence exerted by Climate, we
are bound to return once more to the question, _in what relation
did contagion_, if contagion there was, _stand to this climatic
influence?_ The existence of contagion in the case of gonorrhœa is
certified by the passage of _Galen_ already quoted by Naumann, which
we propose later on to give in full, besides being implied long before
by the law of purification of the Mosaic Books. So far as ulcerous
formations, condylomata and skin-affections such as _mentagra_ etc.,
are concerned, proof is supplied by the facts we have previously given.
According to more modern experience all forms of contagion exhibit in
Southern countries a more fugitive type than elsewhere and spread with
proportionately greater readiness. Whereas in such as are naturally
fugitive, the intensity may for that very reason be less injurious,
fixed and stable forms of contagion on the contrary must obviously
lose in strength, at any rate so far as their local effects go. They
will be the less able to make good a lodgement in the organism,
from the fact that, stimulating the latter as they do to a general
activity, they are the more readily resisted and prevented by this very
state of enhanced activity. For just as, speaking generally, chronic
complaints, uncomplicated by fever, can only be removed by artificially
setting up a feverish condition, that is to say by calling on the
organism as a whole to share in the local manifestations of disease.
Precisely the same is true of local affections set up by any fixed
and stable contagion, and so the removal of the actual contagion can
only be successfully brought about either by direct decomposition and
destruction of the affected tissue or by metamorphosis into a fugitive
form.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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