We notice the same errors in all the descriptions given by the authors of the sixteenth century; they exhibit an imperfect knowledge of the symptomatology, of the genesis and primitive constitutional accidents. We see that as yet clinical medicine had no existence, and that our predecessors were ignorant of the art of co-ordinating the signs of a disease in a thoughtful manner. Nevertheless, their descriptive powers in writing on venereal diseases, as before noted, were excellent, and had the merit of exactitude and honest observation; as, Pierre Manardi observes: “The principal sign of the French disease consists in pustules coming out on the end of the penis in men and at the entrance of vulva or neck of womb among women. Most frequently these pustules ulcerate; I say frequently for the reason that I have seen patients in whom these ulcers were hard as warts, cloves or apple seeds.”
Here we have the aspect of primary syphilis presented by a physician whose name will, with justice, remain attached to the disease as long as it has a history. The secondary symptoms of the malady have never been more dramatically pictured than by Fernel, who remarks: “They had horrible ulcers on them, which might be mistaken for glands, judging from size and color, from which issued a foul discharge of a villainous infecting kind, enough to give a heart-ache; they had long faces of a greenish-black complexion, so covered with sores that nothing more hideous could be imagined.”[42]
Relative to the duration of secondary symptoms, under date of 1495, Marcello de Cumes wrote from the camp of Novarro that “the pustules on the face, like those of leprosy and variola, lasted a year or more when the patient was not treated.”[43]
The physiognomy of the unfortunates whose faces were adorned with lumps and whose foreheads bore the sadly characteristic corona veneris, has been well described in the following verses by Jean Lemaire, of Belgium, a poet and historical writer of fifteenth century. The portrait is exact:
“But in the end, when the venom is ripe,
Sprout out big warts of a scarlet type,
Persistent, spreading over the face,
Leaving the brand of shame and disgrace,
An injury left after passion’s rude storm,
Fair human nature thus to deform.