In the eighteenth century, especially, houses of prostitution in Paris attained to an astonishing degree of elaboration and prosperity. Owing to the constant watchful attention of the police a vast amount of detailed information concerning these establishments was accumulated, and during recent years much of it has been published. A summary of this literature will be found in Dühren's Neue Forshungen über den Marquis de Sade und seine Zeit, 1904, pp. 97 et seq.
Rabutaux, op. cit., p. 54.
Calza has written the history of Venetian prostitution; and some of the documents he found have been reproduced by Mantegazza, Gli Amori degli Uomimi, cap. XIV. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, a comparatively late period, Coryat visited Venice, and in his Crudities gives a full and interesting account of its courtesans, who then numbered, he says, at least 20,000; the revenue they brought into the State maintained a dozen galleys.