Et graviter partim metuentes limina leti
Vivebant ferro privati virili.
(Then too if any one had escaped the acrid discharge of noisome blood, the disease would yet pass into his sinews and joints and onward even into the sexual organs of the body; and some from excessive dread of the gates of death would live bereaved of these parts by the knife. Munro’s translation).
Though we really are concerned only with the last words of Thucydides, so far as they relate to the genitals, yet what precedes has given occasion to such extraordinary interpretations that we feel bound to devote some attention to this as well. The whole passage proved itself an especial stone of stumbling to those writers who endeavoured to identify the Athenian plague with scarlet-fever, as Malfatti did, or with small-pox, like Scuderi and Kraus. In fact this is why the last named says as he does[202]: “The loss of the private parts and the extremities (στερισκομενοι τουτων,—being deprived of these, with the loss of these) would certainly seem to point merely to the loss of the free use of these parts, in consequence of ulcerations, swellings of the joints, lesions and contractions, for the entire members are not likely to have been destroyed by mortification or amputated by the surgeon? Indeed it is only in deference to the verses of Lucretius that the latter opinion has become the one generally held; but even Ancient commentators[203] have felt that the Roman poet may very possibly have mistaken Thucydides’meaning. Moreover I feel myself disposed to agree with them particularly on this ground, that the mortification of the whole of any of the greater limbs, though it has been observed in pestilential fevers, in Typhus contagiosus putridus (putrid infectious Typhus) amongst others, yet makes a comparatively rare symptom of the disease, and at the same time so dangerous a one that it can hardly be, as Thucydides alleges it was, that many (πολλοὶ) after such a serious affection escaped death, while on the contrary some (εἰσὶ δ’οἵ) only did so with the loss of the eyes.” Any one who will compare the just quoted passages of Hippocrates and Galen with the account of Thucydides, will want no further proof that as a matter of fact mortification of the extremities did supervene, an occurrence that even in later times[204] is not of the extreme rarity that Kraus and others believe. Again the fact that many of those attacked escaped with their lives is the less surprising when one remembers that Thucydides is not speaking of entire arms and feet as having fallen off, but only of ἄκρας χεῖρας καὶ πόδας, that is to say, fingers and toes. However supposing any one to prefer not to supply ἄκρων with τούτων, but take it as used in its full extent, maintaining that hands and feet as well as genitals were entirely destroyed, even this would not belong to the category of extremely rare phenomena, for Hippocrates actually saw the extremities entirely fall off in similar circumstances, while if only the ῥεύματα (morbid discharges) came duly to maturity and maturation supervened, the major part (οἱ πλεῖστοι τούτων ἐσώζοντο,—the majority of these were saved) escaped with their life.
Finally the passage of Thucydides gives no sort of evidence to prove that the ἀκρωτηρίων ἀντίληψις (seizure of extremities) occurred solely in those attacked by the fever as metastasis and so on. For the first sentence quoted, to the effect that the disease traversed the whole body, evidently refers back to the preceding clause ἐπικατιόντος τοῦ νοσήματος ἐς τὴν κοιλίαν (when the disease descends into the abdomen), and for this reason is connected with it by the conjunction γὰρ—“for”. The succeeding words καὶ εἴ τις ἐκ τῶν μεγίστων περιγένοιτο (and even supposing a patient to have escaped the worst) may very well be taken in this way; μεγίστων (the greatest, worst things) is made not a Neuter absolute, like τὰ ἔσχατα (last extremities) and such like phrases in other places, but κακῶν (evils) is supplied to go with it, and the whole translated: “even supposing a patient escaped the greatest evils”, that is to say if he were not attacked by the λοῖμος (Plague) in the forms of head and abdominal affections, “yet it marked him”, that is it made its existence manifest by gangrene of the extremities supervening[205]. This Thucydides, a layman writing on a medical subject, supposes to be a mere manifestation of the λοῖμος (Plague), while Hippocrates regarded it as the proof of the erysipelas-putrid condition, which caused the already previously existing ulcers etc. to assume this character.
We have already mentioned the fact that at Athens ulcers of the feet were of frequent occurrence; and these must, no less than the ulcers of the genitals previously existing in any case, have necessarily been likewise assailed by the general unhealthy condition of things, and when this happened, have passed over into gangrene. Thucydides in fact says expressly at the beginning of his delineation of the disease (ch. 49.): τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἔτος, ὡς ὡμολογεῖτο, ἐκ πάντων μάλιστα δὴ ἐκεῖνο ἄνοσον ἐς τὰς ἄλλας ἀσθενείας ἐτύγχανεν ὄν. εἰ δέ τις καὶ προέκαμνέ τι, ἐς τοῦτο πάντα ἀπεκρίθη. (For indeed that year, as was universally admitted, chanced to be of all years one especially free from other diseases in general; and indeed if any one suffered previously from any complaint, all ended in this, the plague.)” We have seen how Hippocrates observed the prevalence of ulcers of the genitals at the period of the special meteorological conditions he drew attention to, and without doubt in the same way such existed at Athens as well, and were subsequently dominated by the prevailing erysipelas-typhoïdal conditions. This was manifested in one of two ways; either the ulcers became gangrenous, or the patient was attacked by typhus, precisely as is noted to be the case at the present day[206]. But under either eventuality the existing contagion was annihilated, in the one case by the general feverish reaction of the organism[207]. But in those cases where neither fever nor mortification supervened, the contagion undoubtedly assumed a more strongly effective character, was more readily infectious, set up more deeply penetrating ulcerations, and the tendency towards the skin being the predominating one, exanthematic eruptions with an inclination to ulcerative forms (ἐκθύματα μεγάλα, ἕρπητες πολλοῖσιν μεγάλοι,—great pustules, extensive creeping eruptions in many cases) were observed by Hippocrates to be set up in Summer, (loco citato p. 487.). All these are factors of the highest importance for the history of Venereal disease, as it is only by them that we shall be enabled to solve the great riddle of the origin of Venereal disease in the XVth. Century,—a riddle to which the answer would long ago have been found, if only enquirers had not been in the habit almost down to our own days of persistently looking upon Venereal disease as an isolated phænomenon.
True it is impossible from the passage of Thucydides to decide with any certainty whether the extremities, hands, feet and genitals, fell off of their own accord or were removed by the knife; but our own opinion is that both was the case, for of course there were Physicians at Athens, and until they had learned their powerlessness against the prevailing sickness, they no doubt employed the remedial means at their disposal, and these consisted according to Hippocrates solely and simply in the use of scalpel and cauterizing iron, all other measures having proved unavailing. That these were equally resorted to in ulcerations of the genitals we see from the passage of Galen quoted above, and the Poem of the Priapeia, p. 74, confirms the same in the most convincing way.
Enough has been alleged to prove how far the view expressed in many different forms, to the effect that, in the Athenian Plague as well as in the meteorological conditions and their results as laid down by Hippocrates, it is a question of Venereal disease, is justified by facts, and to show that even in Antiquity materials are to be found to demonstrate conclusively that the genius epidemicus exercised a not unimportant influence on the rise, form and course of the ulcerations of the genital organs. In what way this influence acted on the complaints consequent on paederastia and the vices of the cunnilingue and the fellator and affecting the posterior and mouth, we cannot at any rate at the moment demonstrate historically, but it seems only probable that previously existing ulcerations in the mouth and throat must under an erysipelas-typhoïdal general condition have proved themselves in the highest degree dangerous to the sufferers.
