[136] Gilberti Anglici Compendium Medicinae, ed. Michael de Capella. Lugduni, 1512, Lib. VII. cap. “De Lepra,” pp. 337-345.
[137] Bernardi Gordonii Lilium Medicinae. Lugd. 1551, p. 88.
[138] Compend. Med. Ed. cit. p. 344.
[139] Lilium Medicinae. Lugd. 1551, p. 89.
[140] Ibid. p. 89.
[141] For fuller reference, see p. 103.
[142] Philos. Trans. of Royal Society, XXXI. 58: “Now in a true leprosy we never meet with the mention of any disorder in those parts, which, if there be not, must absolutely secure the person from having that disease communicated to him by coition with leprous women; but it proves there was a disease among them which was not the leprosy, although it went by that name; and that this could be no other than venereal because it was infectious.”
He then quotes from Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomew Glanvile, De proprietatibus rerum, passages which he thinks relate to syphilis, although they are obviously the distinctive signs of lepra taken almost verbatim from Gilbertus Anglicus. He implies that the later so-called leper-houses of London were really founded for syphilis when it became epidemic. In the will of Ralph Holland, merchant taylor, mention is made of three leper-houses, the Loke, Hackenay and St Giles beyond Holborn Bars, as if these were all that existed in the year 1452. But in the reign of Henry VIII. there were six of them besides St Giles’s,—Knightsbridge, Hammersmith, Highgate, Kingsland, the Lock, and Mile End; and these, says Beckett, were used for the treatment of the French pox, which became exceedingly common after 1494-6.
[143] Martin, Histoire de France, VII. 283.
[144] One of Gascoigne’s references was copied by Beckett (Phil. Trans. XXXI. 47), beginning: “Novi enim ego, Magister Thomas Gascoigne, licet indignus, sacrae theologiae doctor, qui haec scripsi et collegi, diversos viros, qui mortui fuerunt ex putrefactione membrorum suorum et corporis sui, quae corruptio et putrefactio causata fuit, ut ipsi dixerunt, per exercitium copulae carnalis cum mulieribus. Magnus enim dux in Anglia, scil. J. de Gaunt, mortuus est ex tali putrefactione membrorum genitalium et corporis sui, causata per frequentationem mulierum. Magnus enim fornicator fuit, ut in toto regno Angliae divulgabatur,” etc. In the Loci e Libro Veritatum, printed by Thorold Rogers (Oxford, 1881), the following consequences are mentioned: “Plures viri per actum libidinosum luxuriae habuerunt membra sua corrupta et penitus destructa, non solum virgam sed genitalia: et alii habuerunt membra sua per luxuriam corrupta ita quod cogebantur, propter poenam, caput virgae abscindere. Item homo Oxoniae scholaris, Morland nomine, mortuus fuit Oxoniae ex corruptione causata per actum luxuriae.” p. 136.