[314] Aretaeus, De morbor. chronic. symptom. bk. II. ch. 5., Ἀνώλεθρον μὲν ἡ γονόῤῥοια, ἀτερπὲς δὲ καὶ ἀηδὲς μέσφι ἀκοῆς· ἣν γὰρ ἀκρασίη καὶ πάρεσις τὰ ὑγρὰ ἴσχῃ καὶ γόνιμα μέρεα, ὅκως διὰ ψυχρῶν ῥέει ἡ θορὴ, οὐδὲ ἐπισχεῖν ἐστὶ αὐτὴν οὐδὲ ἐν ὕπνοισι· ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἤν τε εὕδῃ, ἤν τε ἐγρηγορέῃ, ἀνεπίσχετος ἡ φορὴ, ἀναίσθητος δὲ ἡ ῥοὴ τοῦ γόνου γίγνεται· νοσέουσι δὲ καὶ γυναῖκες τήνδε τὴν νοῦσον, ἀλλ’ἐπὶ κνησμοῖσι τῶν μορίων καὶ ἡδονῇ προχέεται τῇσι ἡ θορή· ἀτὰρ καὶ πρὸς ἄνδρας ὁμιλίῃ ἀναισχύντῳ· ἄνδρες δὲ οὐδ’ὅλως ὀδάξονται· τὸ δὲ ῥέον ὑγρὸν λεπτὸν, ψυχρὸν, ἄχρουν, ἄγονον· πῶς γὰρ ζωογόνον ἐκπέμψαι σπέρμα ψυχρὴ οὖσα ἡ φύσις· ἢν δὲ καὶ νέοι πάσχωσι, γηραλέους χρὴ γενέσθαι πάντας τὴν ἕξιν, νωθώδεας, ἐκλύτους, ἀψύχους, ὀκνέοντας, κωφούς, ἀσθενέας, ῥικνούς, ἀπρήκτους, ἐπώχρους, λευκοὺς, γυναικώδεας, ἀποσίτους, ψυχροὺς, μελέων βάρεα, καὶ νάρκας σκελέων, ἀκρατέας, καὶ ἐς πάντα παρέτους· ἥδε ἡ νοῦσος ὁδὸς ἐς παράλυσιν πολλοῖσι γίγνεται· πῶς γὰρ οὐκ ἂν τῶν νεύρων ἥδε ἡ δύναμις πάθοι τῆς ἐς ζωῆς γένεσιν φύσιος ἀπεψυγμένης. (Gonorrhœa is not indeed a dangerous thing, but it is a disagreeable one, and one that is in the highest degree unseemly in repute. For if incontinence and paresis attack the soft procreative parts, the semen flows all the same even though the organs are cold, nor is it possible to stop it even in sleep; for whether a man sleep, or wake, the running is continual, and the flow of the seed goes on unconsciously. And women also are subject to this complaint; but in their case the discharge of the semen is accompanied with itchings and with pleasurable feeling, as well as with shameless intercourse with men, whereas men are not in any way excited. And the moisture that is discharged is thin, cold, colourless, unfruitful; for how should its nature, that is cold, send forth fertile semen? And if young men suffer from it, they are bound to grow old in constitution and condition, sluggish, relaxed, lifeless, hesitating, dull of hearing, weak, shrunken, ineffectual, pallid, white, womanish, without appetite, chilly, heavy of limb, and stiff of leg and palsied in every part. This complaint is the avenue to paralysis for many; for how should this power of the nerves not suffer when the natural parts pertaining to the generation of life are chilled).
[315] Celsus De re med. bk. IV. ch. 21., Est etiam circa naturalia vitium, nimia profusio seminis, quod sine venere, sine nocturnis imaginibus sic fertur, ut interposito spatio, tabe hominem consumat. (There is another complaint connected with the private parts, viz. excessive discharge of semen, which apart altogether from love, and apart from nocturnal pollutions in dreams, is so persistent that, given a sufficient interval of time, it destroys a man by wasting).
[316] Alexander of Tralles, bk. IV. ch. 9., δέονται γὰρ οὗτοι τῶν ἐπικιρνώντων καὶ ἐμψυχόντων πάνυ καὶ λουτρῶν εὐκράτων· ὥστε παχυνθεῖσαν ἠρέμα τὴν γονὴν καὶ εὔκρατον γενομένην, μηκέτι φέρεσθαι. (For these patients require compound and very cooling drugs, and lukewarm baths; so that the seed growing quietly thicker and well-conditioned, may no longer flow away).
[317] Galen, Definit. medic. n. 288. (XIX. p. 426.), Γονόῤῥοιά ἐστιν ἀπόκρισις ἐπιφέρουσα σπέρματος νόσημα μετὰ τοῦ τήκεσθαι τὸ σῶμα καὶ ἀχρούστερον ἀποτελεῖσθαι· γίνεται δὲ ἀτονησάντων τῶν σπερματικῶν ἀγγείων, ὥστε τρόπον τινὰ παρειμένων αὐτῶν μὴ κρατεῖσθαι τὸ σπέρμα. (Gonorrhœa is a discharge producing a diseased state of semen accompanied by wasting of the body and an unhealthy-looking complexion; and it arises through the semen vessels having become atonic, so that, these being in a way paralysed, the semen is not retained).
[318] Actuarius, Method. med. bk. I. ch. 22., Et in seminis quidem profluvio, neque coles intenditur, neque aeger eadem qua sanus afficitur voluptate, sed perinde ac si superfluum quiddam excerneretur, sensu privatur. Quod si morbus moram traxerit, necesse est ut aeger in colliquationem collabatur ac pereat; quod pinguior humoris portio eiiciatur ac vitalis spiritus non parum una effluat. (Moreover in this excessive flux of semen, neither is the member erected, nor does the patient experience the same pleasure as he does in health, but exactly as though something superfluous were being eliminated, he is robbed of sensation. But if the malady runs a more protracted course, the sufferer cannot but fall into collapse and succumb, inasmuch as the richer portion of the humour is ejaculated, and the vital spirit must escape along with it). As early as Hippocrates, De morbis bk. II., edit. Kühn Vol. II. p. we read: ἡ νωτιὰς φθίσις ἀπὸ τοῦ μυελοῦ γίνεται· λαμβάνει δὲ μάλιστα νεογάμους καὶ φιλολάγνους ... καὶ ἐπὴν οὐρέῃ ἢ ἀποπατέῃ, προέρχεταί οἱ θορὸς πουλὺς καὶ ὑγρὸς, καὶ γενεὴ οὐκ ἐγγίνεται, καὶ ὀνειρώσσει, κἂν συγκοιμηθῇ γυναικί, κἂν μή. (Spinal consumption arises from the marrow; and it attacks particularly newly married men and lascivious subjects.... And every time the patient makes water or evacuates, semen flows from him copious and wet, and he does not succeed in generating, and has nocturnal pollutions, whether he sleep with a woman or no). Ought this not to be referred to gonorrhœa?
[319] Aretaeus, p. 424. loco citato; also De curat. morb. chron. bk. II. ch. 5., καὶ τοῦ ἀτερπέος τοῦ πάθεος εἵνεκεν καὶ τοῦ κατὰ σύντηξιν κινδυνώδεος καὶ τῆς ἐς διάδεξιν γένος χρείης λύειν χρὴ μὴ βραδέως τὴν γονόῤῥοιαν πάντων κακῶν οὖσαν αἰτίην· (Equally on account of the disagreeable nature of the malady as on account of the risk of tabes or wasting and for the sake of the needful maintenance of posterity, gonorrhœa should be rapidly cured, being the cause of very many evils). Truly if not another passage remained to us from the Ancient writers besides these two of Aretaeus’, they alone would suffice to convince us of the existence in his time of virulent gonorrhœa brought on by sexual intercourse; and it is quite inconceivable how Simon, Versuch einer krit. Gesch. (Essay towards a Critical History), Bk. I. p. 24., can say: “Thus for instance all the symptoms, which Aretaeus mentions in his Chapter on Gonorrhœa, speak for true seminal flux!”
[320] Theodorus Priscianus, bk. II. logic, ch. 11., Satyriasis, gonorrhœa vel priapismus, quibus similis est sub immoderata patratione molestia, his accidentibus disterminantur. Gonorrhœa sine veretri extensione vel usus venerii desiderio, spermatis affluentissima sub effusione corpora debilitat et per chronica tempora producitur. (Satyriasis, gonorrhœa or priapism, maladies involving similar inconvenience as in immoderate copulation, are distinguished by the following particularities. Gonorrhœa without erection of the member or desire for the enjoyment of love, debilitates the body by a most copious discharge of semen, and is protracted over chronic periods of time).
[321] Julius Firmicus Maternus, Astronomica bk. III. chs. 7 and 8., In loco octavo ♀ ab horoscopo constituto ... si ☿ cum ea fuerit vel cum ☿ Venerem in hoc loco positam, malevola stella respexerit, vel per quadratum vel diametrum, vel si cum ipsis, in hoc loco fuerit inventa, omne eius qui natus fuerit patrimonium dissipatur vel qualicunque proscriptione nudatur, mors vero illi per gonorrheam, id est defluxionem seminis, aut contractionem vel spasmum aut apoplexin fertur. (In the eighth place determined by the horoscope stands ♀ Venus.... If ☿ (Mercury) be in conjunction with it, or if Venus standing in this place with ☿ (Mercury) be faced by an evil star, whether by quadrate or diameter, or if such star is found in conjunction with them in this place, all the patrimony of him who has been born under this conjunction is wasted, or is lost utterly by some proscription or another, and his death is brought about by gonorrhœa, that is to say a flux of the semen, or cramp or spasm or apoplexy.)
[322] Caelius Aurelianus, Morb. Chron. bk. V. ch. 7., Item antecedens causa supradictae passionis, quam seminis appellamus lapsum, fuisse probatur, a qua discernitur, si quidem illa passio etiam per diem vigilantibus aegris fluere facit semen, nulla phantasia in usum venereum provocante. (Such is proved to have been another antecedent cause of the above named malady, which we call discharge of semen; but a distinct cause has to be assigned, if it so be that the malady in question makes the semen flow even by day and when the patients are awake, and though no dream provokes to the exercise of love). Philagrius appears to have made this distinction quite correctly, when as quoted by Aëtius (Tetrab. III. serm. 3. ch. 34.), De seminis in somno profluvio, Philagrii (On the discharge of semen in sleep, according to Philagrius), he says: Semen in somnis profundere dicuntur quicumque dum dormiunt, naturae genitale semen emittunt, quod ipsum eis ut plurimum ob vitiati humoris materiam, aut materiae multitudinem aut ob partium seminalium robur contingit. Iam vero quidam et ob animi moestitiam aut inediam, per somnos praeter consuetudinem semen excreverunt, atque id materiae acrimonia irritati, non ob partium seminalium robur, pertulerunt etc. (They are said to discharge semen in sleep, whoever during slumber, ejaculate the genital seed of nature, because they possess it in the greatest degree of abundance either on account of the constituting material of the semen being vitiated or on account of the copiousness of this material, or else on account of the vigour of the seminal organs. But there are also many cases where men have emitted semen in sleep contrary to their wont in consequence of sadness of spirits or fasting, having done so because irritated by the acridness of the material, and not through any vigour of the seminal organs, etc.). The only pity is that Aëtius has not preserved for us his (Philagrius’) opinion as to gonorrhœa, and has not shown clearly exactly what belongs to Philagrius in the Chapter; for a great deal, as indeed is stated, is from Galen and referred by the compiler to gonorrhœa. Philagrius in fact only lived in the latter half of the Fourth Century,—A.D. 364 according to Sprengel, 300 according to Lessing.
[323] Actuarius, Meth. med. bk. IV. ch. 8., Convenit ad haec reliqua victus ratio, quae ad siccitatem declinet, sed non sit calidior, verum frigida. Insuper nutriendus aeger est, viresque modice reficiendae; namque ob continuam excretionem languet corpus et imbecillum est. Quies apta est, et balnea quae humectent tamen alioqui non sunt idonea. Animalia agrestia, quae refrigerantibus exsiccantibusque condiantur, sunt accommodata et vinum pauculum tenueque. (Consistent with this are the remaining rules of diet. This should incline towards dryness, but must not be at all hot, but cold. Further the sufferer must be adequately nourished, and his strength fairly well kept up; for owing to the constant ejaculation of semen the body grows languid and weak. Rest is desirable, and baths, in other circumstances used for moistening the body, are not here advisable. Game, seasoned with cooling and desiccating condiments, is appropriate, and a little thin wine.)