The Plague of Lust, Vol. 1 (of 2) / Being a History of Venereal Disease in Classical Antiquity

by Julius Rosenbaum

However, if the matter is looked into more closely, it will be evident that a large proportion of these scholars directed their attention to one single point only, viz. the antiquity and time of origin of the Disease; and regarded all the other factors only in so far as they supported one or other of the views they had formulated. Besides the co-ordination of these factors is seen to be so loose that no general result of any stringency could ever be obtained. The few men whose definite purpose it was to arrive at such a result, failed, in view of the difficulty of collecting the material, to reach the completeness they had proposed, and so deferred working up what they had accumulated till death put an end to their enterprise. In especial this was the case with Hensler, and the non-appearance of the Second Part of his History of the Venereal Disease must doubtless long continue to be mourned as an irreparable loss.

The Past, on which all experience must draw, affords us so little assistance here that it is to the Future we must look for everything. The Present cannot show us in existence any history of Venereal disease as we understand it, but this in no way entitles it to deny the possibility of such a History. Thus it is of the highest importance to make the attempt to arrange and sift the material now ready and accessible, so far as it concerns the Venereal Disease, on principles conformable to the Conception and proper Contents as indicated above of the History of a Disease, and for this a relative completeness of the collected materials suffices. If in this way we are successful in sketching the history of Venereal Disease at any rate in its general outlines, it can quite well be left to the continued efforts of other Investigators to fill in the individual lines of the picture, especially as then and then only is the particular point ascertained by anticipation, at which later accessions must be worked in.

In every History, what comes first and foremost is to get to know the original Authorities from which the material for its treatment can be drawn, and this forms the proper Contents of the Literary history of the Disease. Accordingly our first duty will be to give a general survey of the literary helps lying ready to hand for the use of the Historian of Venereal Disease, and at the same time to specify how far these were accessible to ourselves. Thus the reader will be enabled at the very outset to form a judgement as to the completeness of the information supplied; and succeeding Enquirers will learn the gaps that are left remaining for them to fill up.

This will conclude a Survey of the historical results so far obtained in connection with the antiquity and time of origin of the Disease; and it will then be possible to indicate the special Scheme we propose to follow in our treatment of the task before us.

Abstract of Opinions advanced at various Periods on the question of the Antiquity and First Rise of the Venereal Disease.

The different Opinions advanced at various periods on the question of the Antiquity and Origin of the Venereal Disease may at the outset be brought under two main divisions, according as the disease is supposed to have been already known to the Ancients and from their time onwards to have been continuously observed, or on the other hand regarded as having first arisen in the ninetieth year of the XVth. Century. Both views were framed much about the same time, and depended largely on the position and education of the person delivering judgement. The former may be styled the view of the learned, the latter the popular view, though indeed at their first inception it was not so much scientific reasons in either case as men’s prejudices that formed their basis.

The few really learned Physicians of the end of XVth. Century and beginning of the XVIth. took as the theme of their study not Nature but rather the medical Writings of the Greeks and Arabians, a field that had long been left unappropriated by them, and all were far too firmly convinced, that Hippocrates, and still more Galen and Avicenna had already included in their Works everything that could ever be the subject of scientific treatment at any given time.

Attention was concentrated upon the Skin Affection that was the predominant form at first, and this was naturally enough taken for a kind of Leprosy, and called sometimes Elephantiasis (Seb. Aquilanus, Phil. Beroaldus), sometimes “Formica” (Schellig, Cumanus, Gilinus, Leonicenus, Steber), by others “Saphat” (J. Widmann, Nat. Montesaurus, Jul. Tanus, Jo. de Fogueda, Sim. Pistor). Hence the view advanced subsequently by Sydenham, Haller, Plenk, Thierry, Haward, and held for a time by Sprengel, that the original form of the Venereal Disease was the “Yaws” or “Piana”, and consequently that Africa must be assigned as the original home of the disease; and in this way the Moors also were brought in as part of the concatenation. Later on, when the conviction grew up that the beginning of the Disease consists in local affections of the genital organs, it was easy to show that these had always been in existence from the most ancient times. But as no direct information on the relation between affections of the Genitals and Skin-disease was to be found in the earlier Writers, enquirers were driven to the supposition, that Syphilitic affections of the Skin had been confounded by the Ancients with Leprosy.

A view, which Becket first sought to establish on precise grounds, appeared on the contrary too bold to other investigators, who thought to find some way of evading it. This was to the effect that Leprosy under favourable conditions had changed into Venereal Disease, and the increased rarity of the former seemed to speak for this opinion. Supporters of this last view are in especial Sprengel and Choulant in his Preface to Fracastori’s “Syphilis”. Whilst the particular home of the Disease was fixed in this way by some authors, Swediaur and Beckman thought to find it in the East Indies, and held that the “Dschossam”, a familiar Indian disease, or else the “Persian Fire” must be looked upon as the original form of the Complaint. Schaufus agreed with them in part; he believed Venereal disease to have been brought by the Gypsies from India to Europe. Dr. Wizmann[3] made the disease arise in the IInd. Century in Dacia, which at that date was transformed into a Roman Colony and had to welcome the licentious Roman soldiery. The excesses of these colonists, in a strange climate, and seconded by a combination of conditions favourable to epidemic sickness, produced the disease, which he says is generated to this day in its genuine form in Turkey. Accordingly Wizmann, as also Sprengel and Choulant, and to some extent Gruner, who considered the Moors to be the parents of the Venereal disease, may be regarded as taking up an intermediate position between the two extreme views, and as making a sort of transition to the opinions of those who look upon the Disease as a new one.

The special supporters of this view were, as mentioned above, the non-medical, though a considerable number of men calling themselves Physicians agreed with them, though on other grounds, differing only as to the mode in which the Disease arose. The prevailing astrological views found the original cause of the Disease in the Conjunction of the Planets, a conjunction declared beforehand by prophecy to bode disaster. With this were included as contributing to the effect Inundations, the oppressed condition of Nations, Famine and the like. The disease was called an epidemic, or what at that period was practically synonymous, a pestilential disease, a Plague, and ascribed of course to the wrath of God. There were other accounts given, that still carry some show of probability; the Disease was referred to the poisoning of wells and of wine (Caesalpinus), to the admixture of gypsum with the flour (Fallopia), or actually to indulgence in human flesh.