Again the result of this investigation is of still more especial interest in so far as it enables us to properly appreciate Thucydides’ notice of the so-called _Plague of Athens_.[200] This has been discussed by very many writers, and has given occasion to the most widely different explanations. He relates as follows: “For the disease which at first had its stronghold in the head, beginning from above downwards traversed by degrees the whole body; and even supposing a patient to have escaped the worst, yet a seizure of the extremities put its mark upon him. For it attacked the genitals and the extremities of the hands and feet; and many escaped death, but with the loss of these parts.” Even more clearly does the poet _Lucretius_[201] paint the disease, when he says: Profluvium porro qui tetri sanguinis acre Exierat; tamen in nervos huic morbus et artus Ibat et _in partes genitales corporis ipsas_, Et graviter partim metuentes limina leti _Vivebant ferro privati virili_. (Then too if any one had escaped the acrid discharge of noisome blood, the disease would yet pass into his sinews and joints and onward even _into the sexual organs of the body_; and some from excessive dread of the gates of death _would live bereaved of these parts by the knife_. Munro’s translation). Though we really are concerned only with the last words of Thucydides, so far as they relate to the genitals, yet what precedes has given occasion to such extraordinary interpretations that we feel bound to devote some attention to this as well. The whole passage proved itself an especial _stone of stumbling_ to those writers who endeavoured to identify the Athenian plague with _scarlet-fever_, as _Malfatti_ did, or with _small-pox_, like _Scuderi_ and _Kraus_. In fact this is why the last named says as he does[202]: “The loss of the private parts and the extremities (στερισκόμενοι τούτων,—being deprived of these, with the loss of these) would certainly seem to point merely to the loss of the _free use_ of these parts, in consequence of ulcerations, swellings of the joints, lesions and contractions, for the entire members are not likely to have been destroyed by mortification or amputated by the surgeon? Indeed it is only in deference to the verses of Lucretius that the latter opinion has become the one generally held; but even Ancient commentators[203] have felt that the Roman poet may very possibly have mistaken Thucydides’ meaning. Moreover I feel myself disposed to agree with them particularly on this ground, that the mortification of the whole of any of the greater limbs, though it _has_ been observed in pestilential fevers, in _Typhus contagiosus putridus_ (putrid infectious Typhus) amongst others, yet makes a comparatively rare symptom of the disease, and at the same time so dangerous a one that it can hardly be, as Thucydides alleges it was, that many (πολλοὶ) after such a serious affection escaped death, while on the contrary