We have already mentioned the fact that at Athens ulcers of the feet were of frequent occurrence; and these must, no less than the ulcers of the genitals previously existing in any case, have necessarily been likewise assailed by the general unhealthy condition of things, and when this happened, have passed over into gangrene. Thucydides in fact says expressly at the beginning of his delineation of the disease (ch. 49.): τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἔτος, ὡς ὡμολογεῖτο, ἐκ πάντων μάλιστα δὴ ἐκεῖνο ἄνοσον ἐς τὰς ἄλλας ἀσθενείας ἐτύγχανεν ὄν. εἰ δέ τις καὶ προέκαμνέ τι, _ἐς τοῦτο πάντα ἀπεκρίθη_. (For indeed that year, as was universally admitted, chanced to be of all years one especially free from other diseases in general; and indeed if any one suffered previously from any complaint, _all ended in this_, the plague.)” We have seen how Hippocrates observed the prevalence of ulcers of the genitals at the period of the special meteorological conditions he drew attention to, and without doubt in the same way such existed at Athens as well, and were subsequently dominated by the prevailing erysipelas-typhoïdal conditions. This was manifested in one of two ways; either the ulcers became gangrenous, or the patient was attacked by typhus, precisely as is noted to be the case at the present day[206]. But under either eventuality the existing contagion was annihilated, in the one case by the general feverish reaction of the organism[207]. But in those cases where neither fever nor mortification supervened, the contagion undoubtedly assumed a more strongly effective character, was more readily infectious, set up more deeply penetrating ulcerations, and the tendency towards the skin being the predominating one, exanthematic eruptions with an inclination to ulcerative forms (ἐκθύματα μεγάλα, ἕρπητες πολλοῖσιν μεγάλοι,—great pustules, extensive creeping eruptions in many cases) were observed by Hippocrates to be set up in Summer, (loco citato p. 487.). All these are factors of the highest importance for the history of Venereal disease, as it is only by them that we shall be enabled to solve the great riddle of the origin of Venereal disease in the XVth. Century,—a riddle to which the answer would long ago have been found, if only enquirers had not been in the habit almost down to our own days of persistently looking upon Venereal disease as an isolated phænomenon.