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.