Nec triste mentum, sordidique lichenes,
(No biting ulcer, or shiny pustules, nor yet disfigured chin, and foul scabs). Accordingly we have here nothing whatever to do with the leprous-like λευκὴ, but only with pustulae lucentes (shiny pustules), which as we shall show presently were a consequence of the practices of the cunnilinigue. We have the more right to assume this, as the old Physicians ascribe λευκὴ to the φλέγμα (phlegmatic humour),—an explanation all the more likely to have been given, as directly afterwards follow the words, αἱ δὲ λέπραι καὶ οἱ λειχῆνες ἐκ τῶν μελαγχολικῶν (but leprosies and tetters arise out of the melancholic diseases). True this is in contradiction with another passage of Hippocrates,[74] for in this we read: λέπρη καὶ κνησμὸς καὶ ψώρη καὶ λειχῆνες καὶ ἀλφὸς καὶ ἀλώπεκες ὑπὸ φλέγματος γίνονται. (leprosy, and itch, and scab, and tetters, and dull-white leprosy, and manges, arise from phlegm). This much at any rate appears to us to result, viz. that the whole passage under discussion cannot possibly be by Hippocrates, but much more probably is due to some author of the Alexandrine age, who enjoyed ample opportunities for studying the consequences of the unnatural excesses as so often observed since Pompey the Great’s time.
To assume that Hippocrates was actually acquainted with these in any completeness would up to the present be premature; at any rate we are bound, so far as our study of his writings enables us to judge, to deny him any knowledge of the fact that sexual excesses were the cause of the different affections of the genital organs chronicled by him. Of course he may have supposed all this to be notorious and the knowledge of it common property, but a host of statements would be found to tell against any such supposition. Opportunities of making acquaintance with the vice of the cunnilingue could certainly not have been lacking, it being so familiar a thing in his time that Aristophanes[75] again and again derided it in his Comedies. Whatever conclusion we come to on this head, at least the passage of Hippocrates cannot justify anyone in maintaining that the φοινικίη νοῦσος,—(Phœnician disease) was true Elephantiasis, even if, as may be, the preliminary proposition that elephantiasis was a consequence of debauchery be made good,—a point to which we propose later on to return. On the subject of Satyriasis in Crete, we have already expressed our views.
Just as the Phoenicians carried the seed of the vice to Greece and other lands, so at a later period was it disseminated from Syria to Italy; and so Ausonius says (Epigr. 128.):
Eunus Syriscus inguinum liguritor,
Opicus[76] magister (sic eum ducet Phyllis)
Muliebre membrum quadriangulum cernit:
Triquetro coactu Δ literam ducit.
De valle femorum altrinsecus pares rugas,
Mediumque, fissi rima qua patet, callem