The unity or duality of syphilis historically considered / by J.L. Milton.

  • Milton, J. L. (John Laws), 1820-1898.
Date:
1886
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The unity or duality of syphilis historically considered / by J.L. Milton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    acting at the point of contact, had come to be recognised, althougli still encumbered with much that was erroneous as regards the nature of this lesion,—the old historical landmarks had almost been lost sight of, and very soon after the time of even the first of these two writers the epoch of confusion had fairly set in. As this is the turning-point in the history of our subject, I propose to examine it rather fully. MM. Bassereau and Chabalier date the change in men's opinions as to the quality of syphilis from the account of this disease given in 1508 by Vella. If so, his readers were very easily convinced, for, I think, a piece of worse reasoning could scarcely be found; and if he can be supposed to have proved anything, it is that he has utterly confuted himself. He saw the disease both before and after the outbreak of the morbus gallicus, and expresses his surprise at finding it from that date followed by constitutional symptoms, because the initial lesions seemed to him identical. The way in which these patients are infected, he says, is the same as that in which the virile members were infected before this disease (the morbus gallicus) existed—that is to say, by the act of coition, by the same organ, and, so far as the power of sight enables one to judge, by the same pustules. For which reason, those skilled in the art (of medicine) not being able to see any distinction between the one and the other, proceeded in the old way with the treatment of the new disease. Unless this means that chancroid not only existed, but was fairly common before the assumed date of the coming of syphilis, I am utterly at a loss to know what it does mean. If the fact of an author, writing on the spot, treating one disease as new and never alluding to the other in any such way, be not evidence of the pre-existence of that other, pray, of what is it evidence ? what does it go to prove ? Here, too, we see scattered to the winds all the arguing about the soft sores of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries being common ulcers, for Vella tells us that he could not distinguish them from sores which were clearly the first lesions of syphilis. Therefore, if the older sores were not chancroids, chancroid has never existed at all, and must be treated as a myth. Of course, Vella's mistake was that he converted an occasional resemblance into a rule. The occasional resemblance we know to be an established fact, seeing that some of the best observers, even M. Eicord himself, have not hesitated to confess that they' could not always make out the nature of a sore from its visible signs. Here, then, we see that the confusion between the two forms ot syphilis, soon afterwards to be openly taught, is fairly hinted at on authority, and had already begun to disturb men's opinions; but for all this, I consider that both Bassereau and Chabaher have erred in ascribing the beginning of the belief in the unity of syphilis to the weight of any arguments employed by Vella, for I am inclined to think that he never had influence enough, either