January 18th, 1509.—“Respitt made to Thomas Lyn, burges of Edinburgh, for ye slauchtir of umquihile Schir Lancelote Patonsoun, chapellain, quhilk happinit be negligent cure and medicine yat ye said Thomas tuk one him to cure and hele ye said umquhile Schir Lancelote of ye infirmitie of ye Grantgor yat he was infekkit with. To endure for xix yeeris. (Subscripsit per dominum Regem apud Edinburghe.)”[605]
Some, perhaps, of my professional brethren may think that this nineteen years’ banishment from the town was a proper punishment for an unprofessional charlatan undertaking the cure of syphilis in the sixteenth century; and some, possibly, may even hold, that it would not be an improper proceeding in this—the nineteenth century.
The disease is alluded to in some of the old Scotch witch trials of the sixteenth century.
One of the most remarkable of these trials was that of a lady of station and wealth—Euphame Macalzane, daughter of Lord Cliftonhall, a judge of the Court of Session. Among other matters, she was “indyted and accusit” of using, during the birth of her two sons, anæsthetics in the form of charms, and a fairy stone “layit under the bowster,” whereby, in the words of the dittay, “your seiknes was cassin of you unnaturallie, in the birth of your fyrst sone upon ane dog, quhilk ranne away and wes newir sene agane. And in the birth of your last sone, the same prakteis foirsaid wes usit, and your naturall and kindlie payne, unnaturallie cassin of you uponn the wantonne cat in the house, quhilk lyke wyis wes newer sene thair efter.” In the fourteenth item of her indictment she is accused of trying to break off a marriage by “certane witchcraft,” and by alleging that the intended bridegroom had the “glengore.” For these and other analogous crimes this unfortunate lady was “takin to the Castel-Hill of Edinburghe, and thair bund to ane staik, and brunt in assis, quick to the death.”[606]
There are also various sarcastic allusions to syphilis by the Scottish poets of these early days, amply testifying to the fact of its rapid diffusion both among the followers of the court—who were then the most common objects of poetical satire—and among the community at large.
William Dunbar, the flower of the old Scottish poets, was, at the period of the first introduction of syphilis in 1497, in the prime of manhood; and in two or three years afterwards, viz. in 1500, he was attached to James IV. and his court by an annual state pension. In a number of verses addressed to his patroness, Margaret, the Queen of James IV. and the sister of Henry VIII.—verses which appear to us at the present day, and with our existing standards of taste, as utterly degraded and indecent—Dunbar commemorates the communication of the new disease under the name of the “pockis” and the “Spanyie pokis,” to the Queen’s men (as he terms them) during the jollities of Fastern’s e’en, and the reign of the Abbot of Unreason; and he closes his stanzas with an earnest advice to all youths, to
“Be ware with that perrelous play
That men callis libbing of the Pockis.”[607]
The after effects and consequences of the disease he describes as follows:—