Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
Anchors for footnotes 27 and 59 were missing and have been added in appropriate places.
The Orphean hymn in footnote 12 is in error. The correction is shown with the footnote.
(the act the Lesbian) in footnote 327 is erroneous but could be ‘to act ...’ or ‘the act of ...’ so remains uncorrected.
The book contains several blank pages and long and multi page footnotes hence there are gaps in, and variable spacing of, page numbers. Many index entries refer directly to muli-page footnotes, where this is clearly the case, the index link directs to the footnote.
An index to both volumes is included in volume II. This has been copied into the end of this volume by the transcriber.
THE
PLAGUE OF LUST
Volume I
This work, printed for a small number of subscribers,
Medical Men—Experts and Specialists in
Nervous Diseases—Lawyers—Psychiatrists
Travellers and Anthropologists—is not
sold to the Trade, and is strictly
limited to FIVE HUNDRED
NUMBERED COPIES.
The present copy is
No. 105
THE
PLAGUE OF LUST,
BEING A HISTORY OF VENEREAL DISEASE
IN
CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY,
and Including:—Detailed Investigations into the
Cult of Venus, and Phallic Worship, Brothels,
the Νοῦσος Θήλεια (Feminine disease) of the
Scythians, Paederastia, and other Sexual
Perversions amongst the Ancients,
AS CONTRIBUTIONS TOWARDS
THE EXACT INTERPRETATION OF THEIR WRITINGS
BY
Dr. JULIUS ROSENBAUM
TRANSLATED FROM THE SIXTH (UNABRIDGED) GERMAN EDITION
BY
AN OXFORD M.A.
The First of Two Volumes
Paris
CHARLES CARRINGTON
Publisher of Medical, Folk-lore and Historical Works.
13, Faubourg Montmartre, 13
MDCCCCI
The price of this work complete is FIVE GUINEAS.
TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD.
The Translator of Dr. Rosenbaum’s great book, the Geschichte der Lustseuche im Alterthume, feels that no apology is required for presenting a Work of this calibre and importance in an English dress,—for the first time. Needless to say the Book in no way appeals,—or is meant to appeal,—to the general reading public. It is a book for Students and Specialists, as is recognized indeed by the conditions of the present publication, in a limited edition and at a high price.
To Historical Students and Medical Specialists alike it is of the highest value and interest, and in many respects an indispensable addition to their Library. The object the Writer proposed to himself was a History of Venereal Disease, to trace its existence, symptoms and incidence, from the earliest notices of its occurrence recorded in Literature onwards. This ambitious programme he has only partially carried out in the present Work, which forms Part I. of the projected Treatise as a whole, and deals with the Disease under its various forms and successive manifestations throughout Antiquity. In it he devotes his efforts to proving,—and we think with conclusive success,—the existence, denied by so many, of the dread Disease in different shapes in Europe, Asia and Africa long before the Christian era, and all through the period of Classical Antiquity, scouting utterly, the popular theory of its first introduction at the end of the Fifteenth and beginning of the Sixteenth Centuries from America.
With this end in view the learned and laborious Author collects an enormous apparatus criticus of quotations from Greek and Latin writers, both in prose and verse, and this not merely from the better known authors of Antiquity, but equally from later and much less familiar sources. Obscure Erotic Writers, historical fragments, Christian Fathers,—all is fish that comes to his comprehensive, though not undiscriminating, net; and probably there is not to be found in the whole range of Scholarship so wide and complete a collection of historical and literary illustrations and allusions brought together with the express purpose of throwing light on one special subject of enquiry.
Such in briefest outline is the scope and achievement of Dr. Rosenbaum’s masterpiece. But brief as it is, it suffices to show to how many classes of Students and Scientists the work appeals. First and foremost it is of direct service to Physicians in general and Specialists in Venereal Disease in particular, to Enquirers into the problems of Insanity and the morbid manifestations of a diseased brain, as well as to Anthropologists and all scientific observers of Humanity. On another side, in virtue of its wealth of curious and recondite quotation, it is of the highest interest and attraction to Classical Scholars and every Student of Antiquity and Ancient Literature; while midway between these two categories, Students of Morals and Human Institutions cannot possibly afford to neglect a storehouse of “human documents” so invaluable in the domain of their studies.
Even to the general Historical Student, who without laying any claim to the proud title of Specialist, is deeply interested in the conditions of human life on our planet in former days, and eager to enquire into all matters relating to the health and happiness of mankind, the Book has a great deal to offer. Few things have more profoundly modified these factors of human well-being than Venereal disease and its ravages in all ages; while any systematic enquiry into this most important subject cannot fail to throw many side-lights,—lurid enough, but none the less instructive,—on life and morals, social relations and sexual aberrations, among different Peoples and at different Epochs. What can be more interesting,—painful as the interest often is,—than much of the information here afforded, at first hand and from authentic citations of Ancient writers, of social and sexual habits and ideals, of strange rites and rituals and abominable practices, prevalent as well in the free Republics of Greece as under the corrupt sway of the Roman Emperors.
Great and wonderful no doubt were the Communities of the Ancient world, beautiful the fine flower of graceful living, and high the level of philosophic and literary culture attained, consummate the artistic relics they have left us; but what a seamy side this same Classical Civilization had to show,—what unspeakable abominations underlay its social life, what atrocities of foulness, cruelty and lust,—some of them flourishing under the sanction of Religion itself,—counterbalanced the virtues of wise citizenship and warlike valour and Stoic self-denial. Lurid and terrible indeed are some of the pictures of horror that shape themselves from certain of Dr. Rosenbaum’s pages,—the whole Section, for instance, in Vol. I. dealing with “Brothels and Courtesans”, and in an even higher degree that on “Paederastia” and the diseases consequent on this unnatural practice. Specially graphic and vivid sections again, in Vol. II., are those treating of the practice of “Depilation” among Greeks and Romans, and the Baths and Bathing habits of Antiquity.
To return for a moment to the Medical and Anthropological aspects of the Work. Perhaps no single branch of Scientific Enquiry has made such noteworthy strides of late years as Anthropology, and in particular the special Department of that Science devoted to morbid and anomalous manifestations of the sexual appetite,—unnatural lusts, sensual aberrations, sexual inversions, and all the rest. The subject, no doubt, is repulsive, but it is none the less profoundly important from the scientific side, in connexion both with the general advance of our knowledge of Mankind, and with the special Study of Insanity and Madness, as well as from the humanitarian point of view as giving material for the eventual alleviation of many of these manifestations of Mental Disease. Out of a host of names, it is only necessary to mention two, those of Lombroso and Krafft-Ebing, to demonstrate the high place these investigations have vindicated for themselves among the scientific triumphs of the Century that has just closed. On this side the Geschichte der Lustseuche is of the highest importance, supplying as it does innumerable instances of those very phaenomena of morbid sexual perversions that constitute the subject matter of this rapidly progressive branch of Science, one likely in the near future to prove of infinite benefit to afflicted humanity.
Of the Author personally there is no need to say much, nor indeed is there much to be said. His life was quiet and uneventful, as a Scholar’s and Savant’s should be. After holding a Professorship at Berlin, he was summoned to fill a similar post at the University of Halle, where he succeeded to the Chair left vacant by the death of the celebrated Dr. Baumgarten-Crusius; and it was here that he completed his great Work,—in spite of difficulties and lack of books, which he naïvely and rather pathetically laments in his Preface. Halle had already been made illustrious by an earlier and even more distinguished worker in the same field, the famous Sprengel (died March 15, 1833), author of a masterly History of Medicine and many other professional works; and with a characteristic touch of Teutonic sentimentality our Author dates the Preface to his own Geschichte on Sprengel’s birth-day.
A by no means unimportant feature of Dr. Rosenbaum’s book, and one according well with his patient and laborious methods, is the very extensive and valuable Bibliography, which will be found at the end of the Work. This embraces almost everything that has been written on the subject in all languages, and should prove of inestimable service to the serious student.
For any errors that may have crept into his version, the Translator must crave indulgence. Some such are inevitable, more particularly in the renderings of the innumerable Latin and Greek quotations, many of which are involved in diction and obscure in allusion, and some of disputed interpretation. The labour involved has been no small one,—the mere proof-reading itself being a heavy task in a book like the present crammed with citations from several languages.
For the general appearance and get up of the Book, the Publisher, Mr. Charles Carrington, of Paris, is responsible, and his name, so well known in connection with the production of Medical and Scientific works of this kind, is a sufficient guarantee of excellence.
In conclusion, the Translator offers with confidence the result of his labours to all Englishmen interested as Specialists in the History of Medicine, in Anthropology and the Scientific Study of Insanity, as also in Classical Scholarship and the Study of Antiquity and Ancient Literature, as well as to Enquirers generally into the History of Morals and the life and life conditions of earlier days. In doing so, he feels sure of a favourable reception for so important and scholarly a Work, throwing such a flood of light on all these different departments of study.
Oxford, June 14, 1901.
DR. ROSENBAUM’S
PREFACE TO THE FIRST (GERMAN) EDITION
[AUTHOR’S PREFACE]
TO THE
FIRST (GERMAN) EDITION.
It is now six years ago, during my residence in Berlin, and with a view to a historical Survey of miliary fevers, that I began a closer and more systematic study of the Epidemics of the XVth. and XVIth. Centuries. In the course of these enquiries my attention was inevitably directed to the subject of Venereal disease, which exerted so powerful an influence at that epoch both on the physical and the moral life of nations. Accustomed as I was to regard History as being something more than a mere quasi-mechanical aggregation of facts, the observation was soon borne in upon me that only through a painstaking examination of the contemporary conditions of epidemic disease could the Venereal Disease of the period be really understood. Consequently I felt I must isolate this terrible scourge of humanity from the general survey,—so general as to be well-nigh all-embracing,—and consider it as a phænomenon apart.
Once started on these lines, I occupied myself specially with the subject, and arrived at the surprising result, that the Venereal Disease of the XVth. Century owed its terrible characteristics solely and entirely to the contemporary exanthematic-typhoïdal Genius Epidemicus, which made itself known in the South of Europe by petechial fevers and by the Sudor Anglicus (English Sweating-fever) in the North. I concluded further that the disease was not epidemic at all, merely liable to arise under epidemic influence; and must consequently have been already extant before the arrival of the said Genius Epidemicus.
Time and circumstances compelled me to remain satisfied provisionally with this general conclusion, and only after I had fixed my abode permanently at Halle, could I resume my earlier investigations. Yet again these were interrupted, partly by my work on the Diseases of the Skin for the Dictionary of Surgery edited by Prof. Blasius, partly by my Habilitation (formal entry on the Staff) at the University of that place, to which I had been repeatedly invited after the unexpected death of the late Dr. Baumgarten-Crusius. Eventually I was enabled to devote the greater part of my leisure hours to this subject, one which in the meantime was never quite lost sight of. I began to sift and arrange the material I found accumulated, but in a short time I convinced myself that in its treatment I had to strike out a different road from that followed hitherto, if I ever intended on my own account to reach important results; and I felt it would be impossible to complete the whole Survey in a single moderate-sized volume. Consequently I proceeded to limit myself to the enquiry whether or no Venereal disease had been extant in Ancient times, and it is this investigation that I now publish as a first Part of the History of Venereal disease.
The general plan I have followed in my treatment of the subject is sufficiently explained in the Introduction; while a perusal of the text will show in what relation my investigations stand towards those of my predecessors, and at the same time to what extent these have been made use of, or indeed could be made use of, in my work. Owing to the very nature of the subject the Survey as a whole was bound to assume a critical character, dealing as it does not solely with the history of the Disease, but also with the examination of an extensive array of views and opinions already formulated. The conduct of this examination I leave the reader to judge of; but I believe I can confidently assert it was always the matter, never the man, that I subjected to critical treatment. Accordingly I laid little stress on brilliant results, and made no effort to conceal lack of facts by dazzling hypotheses; instead I made it my supreme object to come at the truth as near as possible, and preferred to confess my ignorance, if the helps and authorities I had at my disposal failed me, rather than advance propositions the baselessness of which a sober criticism is only too soon in a position to demonstrate.
“I imposed this law on myself—to believe no man’s mere assertion; to depend on original authorities; to look at every passage with my own eyes, and read it in connexion with its context; to pick out the plain fact observed from the Chaos of hypotheses, and to accept as exact only what I could deduce from the authorities myself and see to be the evident purport of the observation,—absolutely unconcerned how each arbitrary theory might be affected or the sacrosanct authority of such or such a Scholar stand or fall. Why should we deem great men infallible? why find it impossible to honour them and yet dissent from them in opinion?—I felt I owed to my reader a corresponding impartiality in statement of the facts and arguments based upon them. If I was determined to take nothing on trust, but to examine and see for myself, I could not reasonably demand faith from the reader and refuse to communicate to him the proofs and original documents I had drawn upon. It was no case of mere quotation from books,—I was bound to lay open the original evidence for his inspection.” These words of Hensler’s I took as my guiding-principle, and if I have deviated from their standard in the Third Section, this only happened because the greater part of the passages there quoted have been repeatedly handled by my predecessors, and I feared to increase the bulk and consequently the cost of the Book to the prejudice of the reader.
I am well aware that the method I have adopted hardly corresponds with the taste of the present day; and if the public choose to find in my work nothing but an idle display of quotations, I cannot fail to be mortified. Nevertheless I prefer to encounter, if needs be, the reproach of pedantry rather than that of superficiality. With the difficulties I met with in connection with particular investigations I need not trouble the reader at greater length, as they are sufficiently familiar to everyone engaged in similar researches. I may be allowed to point out what a task was presented by the co-ordination of so considerable a number of scattered data. These I had, in the almost total absence of earlier works on the same subject, to collect mostly by my own reading from very widely separated Authors; and anything like symmetry of arrangement was made still more difficult when, as occurred more than once, the discovery of a single passage forced me to entirely re-write a substantial part of my manuscript, often within a short time of its going to Press. For the same reason the indulgent reader must excuse it, if here and there a later observation involves the supplementing and in some degree correcting of a previous statement,—a thing that would have been done much more frequently, had I not dreaded treating my material in too rambling a fashion. It would be quite easy now to subjoin in the form of appendices a multitude of additional proofs, of course only corroborating views already laid down,—proofs I owed to further reading of the Ancient authors. However absolute completeness is impossible of attainment for the individual; and I can only hope the humble request I hereby express,—a request addressed specially to professional students of Antiquity,—that others may favour me with contributions and remarks relevant to my subject, may be not entirely without result. So later on perhaps the material accumulated may be utilised more efficiently, if the interest manifested by the learned in my undertaking is of such a nature as to demand a re-modelling of the whole Investigation.
The necessity I found myself under of expressing this request for countenance on the part of students of Antiquity is the very thing that specially induced me to strongly recommend the First Part of my work, even on its Title-page, to their particular consideration; and it will be a source of self-congratulation if the attempts incidentally introduced to gain a better insight into the relics of Antiquity, meeting with their approval, become an inducement to the Physician in his professional studies to offer a helping hand to human weaknesses. The question at issue is nothing less than that of gaining a clear insight into the nature and origin of the operation of a Disease that destroys the very marrow of Nations. Without such insight the Physician cannot hope, whether in the particular case or speaking generally, to obtain a radical cure; and of all forms of Disease the Venereal is pre-eminently that where obscurity in the history of the malady conditions obscurity in its curative treatment. For the first time it is successfully proved with irrefragable certainty that the Ancients were infested with this morbus mundanus (World-disease) just as much as the Moderns. Honourable nations are freed from the shameful reproach of fathering this Complaint; and at the same time Physicians see themselves forced to seek a reason for the untrustworthiness they recognise at the present day as belonging to the so-called “Specifics”, not in the nature of these remedies, but in the changes which the Disease has undergone under external influences. Moreover they will find that the non-mercurial treatment nowadays so highly extolled is far from being the mere creature of fashion; rather it is the direct consequence of the alteration in the common and universal genius of the Complaint, which appears at this moment to be again tending to a gradual disappearance. The grounds for this assertion I have already more than once explained to my hearers in my repeated Lectures on Venereal Disease; and I propose to communicate them fully in the Second Part of my History of the Disease, framed on the same principles as the First.
When I shall publish this Second Part, if ever, will depend first on the reception of the preceding volume; secondly on whether more favourable external conditions provide the leisure that is indispensably necessary for Historical investigations of the sort, and at the same time put at my disposal a more complete literary apparatus than has hitherto been the case. For historico-medical studies in general there exists hardly a more unfavourable[1] place than Halle; and this is specially and peculiarly so with regard to epidemic diseases. As far as Venereal Disease is concerned the whole literary wealth of our University Library amounts to something like ten or twelve Works, half of which are all but worthless. I myself shrank from no expense to obtain possession of the literary helps required, and my collections, particularly on the subject of Epidemics, might boast of being not inferior to those of any private individual; yet they are quite insufficient for my purpose, so much, especially from the earlier Centuries, being no longer procurable by way of purchase.
But when all that is extant in writing is procured, the business is still far from being done. I am still in want of quite a formidable array of facts that can only be the fruit of observations in more recent times. For this reason may I appeal to my elder professional brethren, and above all to the different medical Unions and Associations at home and abroad with the request that they will, whether directly or indirectly, help me to the possession of the facts in question. Such are in particular facts concerning the influence of the Genius Epidemicus on the different forms or Venereal Disease, and first and foremost it behoves me to learn—what influence Typhus manifested during the first fifteen years of this Century, particularly since 1811, in different Countries. That such an influence, and a disastrous one, did take place is evidenced not only by the 364 pp. of collected Authorities, but also by the data of the brilliant Sachs in his “Concise Dictionary of Practical Therapeutics”, II. Pt. 1. (Article: Guajac) p. 637. To my sorrow I have only just, since the appearance of the Index to that valuable Work, become acquainted with these data, which appealed to me all the more from the fact that throughout they corroborate the results reached by myself in the historical sphere.
Sachs, and so far as I know he was the first to express this opinion openly, holds as a fully established conclusion that the Venereal Disease of the XVth. Century owed the characteristics it then possessed merely to the prevailing Genius epidemicus typhodes; though at the same time I cannot favour his assumption of a leprous-syphilitic Diathesis (general condition of body) as already existent. Nothing is better fitted to give a clear insight into these earlier conditions than a knowledge of the period of the Thirty Years’ War and of the Typhus epidemics at the beginning of the present Century. Would it had happened to any of those heroes of the healing art who played an active part in the great Drama of that time to have crowned his day’s-work by leaving us a more detailed medical recital of the incidents. The number of men qualified for the task grows daily fewer, the possibility of gathering the material required daily harder of realization; and, though it is not so yet, the work may later on be impracticable[2].
In conclusion—may I be allowed hereby to offer my sincere thanks to all who in any way have granted me active support in the course my enquiries. I should be glad to give their names, did I not fear they might dislike seeing themselves recorded in connection with a History of Venereal Disease. In spite of this scruple I feel compelled to make an exception in the case of one of them, viz. my friend, Dr. Eckstein, Headmaster of the Royal High-School (Pädagogium) of Halle. He shared with me the exceedingly laborious duty of correcting the proofs; and both myself and my readers into the bargain owe him a debt of warmest gratitude for so doing.
Written on the birth-day of C. Sprengel.
CONTENTS
AND
GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
INTRODUCTION:
| PAGE | |
| Conception and Contents of the Historyof a Disease in General | [XXV] |
| Possibility of the History of a Diseasein General and of VenerealDisease in Particular | [XXVIII] |
| Abstract of Opinions | [XXXI] |
| General Scheme of Treatment | [XXXIV] |
FIRST PART.
Venereal Disease in Antiquity.
| Authorities discussed | [3] |
| Influences which promoted the generation of Disease consequent upon Use or Misuse of the Genital Organs | [10] |
| The Cult of Venus | [12] |
| The Lingam and Phallic Worship | [33] |
| Maladies of the Genital Organs at Athens | [39] |
| Maladies of the Genital Organs at Lampsacus | [41] |
| Plague of Baal-Peor | [49] |
| Brothels and Courtesans | [64] |
| Paederastia | [108] |
| Diseases consequent on Paederastia | [126] |
| The ῥέγχειν (snoring, snorting) of the Inhabitants of Tarsus | [133] |
| Νοῦσος Θήλεια (Feminine Disease) of the Scythians | [143] |
| Bibliography: Authorities and Historians | [257] |
