SECRET DISEASES AT ROME.
At what period, and where, venereal diseases first made their appearance, is a matter of doubt. It was long the opinion of the faculty that they were of modern origin, and that Europe had derived them from America, where the sailors of Columbus had first contracted them. This opinion does not appear to rest on any solid basis, and is now generally rejected. The fact is, that the venereal disease prevailed extensively in Europe in the fifteenth century; but the presumption, from an imposing mass of circumstantial evidence, is that it has afflicted humanity from the beginning of history.
Still, it is strange that Greek and Latin authors do not mention it. There is a passage in Juvenal in which allusion is made to a disgusting disease, which appears to bear resemblance to venereal disease. Epigrams of Martial hint at something of the same kind. Celsus describes several diseases of the generative organs, but none of these authors ascribe the diseases they mention to venereal intercourse.
Celsus prefaces what he says on the subject of this class of maladies with an apology. Nothing but a sense of duty has led him to allude to matters so delicate; but he feels that he ought not to allow his country to lose the benefit of his experience, and he conceives it to be “desirable to disseminate among the people some medical principles with regard to a class of diseases which are never revealed to any one.”
After this apology, he proceeds to speak of a disease which he calls inflammatio colis, which seems to have borne a striking analogy to the modern Phymosis. It has been supposed that the Elephantiasis, which he describes at length, was also of a syphilitic character; and the symptoms detailed by Aretous, who wrote in the latter half of the first century, certainly remind the reader of secondary syphilis; but the best opinion of to-day appears to be that the diseases are distinct and unconnected.
Women afflicted with secret diseases were called aucunnuentæ, which explains itself. They prayed to Juno Fluonia for relief, and used the aster atticus by way of medicine. The Greek term for this herb being Bonbornion, which the Romans converted into Bubonium, that word came to be applied to the disease for which it was given, whether in the case of females or males. Modern science has obtained thence the term Bubo. The Romans said of a female who communicated a disease to a man, Hæc te imbubinat.[141]
We find, moreover, in the later writers, allusions to the morbus campanus, the clazomenæ, the rubigo, etc., which were all secret diseases of a type, if not syphilitic, strongly resembling it. It must be admitted, however, that no passage in the ancient writers directly ascribes these diseases to commerce with prostitutes.
Roman doctors declined to treat secret diseases. They were called by the generic term morbus indecens, and it was considered unbecoming to confess to them or to treat them. Rich men owned a slave doctor who was in the confidence of the family, and to whom such delicate secrets would naturally be confided. But the mass of the people were restrained by shame from communicating their misfortunes; as was the case among the Jews, the unhappy patient was driven to seclusion as the only remedy. However cruel and senseless this practice may have been as regarded the sufferer, it was of service to the people, as it prevented, in some degree, the spread of contagion.
Up to the period of the civil wars, and perhaps as late as the Christian era, the only physicians at Rome were drug-sellers, enchanters, and midwives. The standing of the former may be inferred from a passage in Horace, where he classes them with the lowest outcasts of Roman society.[142] The enchanters (sagæ) made philtres to produce or impede the sensual appetite. They were execrated, and even so amorous a poet as Ovid felt bound to warn young girls against the evil effects of the aphrodisiacs they concocted.[143] Midwives also made philtres, and are often confounded with the sagæ. The healing science of the three classes must have been small.
About the reign of Augustus, Greek physicians began to settle at Rome. They possessed much theory, and some practical experience, as the Treatise of Celsus shows, and soon became an important class in Roman society. It was not, however, till the reign of Nero, that an office of public physician was created. Under that emperor, a Greek named Andromachus was appointed archiater, or court physician, and archiatii populares were soon afterward appointed for the people. They were allowed to receive money from the rich, but they were bound, in consideration of various privileges bestowed on their office, to treat the poor gratuitously. They were stationed in every city in the empire. Rome had fourteen, besides those attached to the Vestals, the Gymnasia, and the court; other large cities had ten, and so on, down to the small towns which had one or two.[144] From the duties and privileges of the archiatii, it would appear they were subject to the ædiles.