A history of syphilis : reprinted and enlarged from the original paper in the "Edinburgh Medical Journal" / by J.L. Milton, senior surgeon to St. John's Hospital for Diseases of the Skin.

  • Milton, J. L. (John Laws), 1820-1898
Date:
1880
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A history of syphilis : reprinted and enlarged from the original paper in the "Edinburgh Medical Journal" / by J.L. Milton, senior surgeon to St. John's Hospital for Diseases of the Skin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    constitutional disease, did not, at one period of historic medicine, entail this penalty. Till we come to the incomplete case men¬ tioned in the consultations of Hugo Bencius, we find no descrip¬ tion which can really pass for a faithful portrait of lues. Utter silence about constitutional syphilis taken as a whole, absence of all reliable account of it taken as a sequence and group of symp¬ toms, meet us, turn where we will. We hear indeed, long before the invasion of Italy by the French, of two diseases which some authors have unhesitatingly pronounced to be syphilis, but which I feel compelled to reject with equal want of hesitation. The first of these is the form of leprosy said to have been communicated by contact. The opinion that this was constitu¬ tional syphilis, unrecognized and mistaken, has been supported by an array of historical testimony for which I cannot find space, but as the question is one of considerable importance, it can be better taken when that of the recognition of syphilis as the leprosy of the ancient writers comes under review. For the pre¬ sent it will, I think, suffice to say, that all the most reliable evidence is in favour of the view, that the disease thus confounded with syphilis was simply elephantiasis Graecorum, and that the idea of its being contagious rested on a mistake. My own ex¬ perience, certainly, quite supports the theory of non-cqntagion; and I do not see how any one can duly weigh such testimony as that detailed by Bateman,1 that in the report of the London Col¬ lege of Physicians on leprosy, and the facts related by Dr. Gavin Milroy,2 without coming to the conclusion, that this disease is rarely if ever transmitted even by so potent a means of communi¬ cation as sexual intercourse. Yet in the face of all this evidence we are told,3 that the belief in the contagious nature of leprosy, so strongly implanted in the minds of the laity, is shared by some members of the medical profession. An error, then, prevalent in our day, is conceivable enough in times so far removed. The other disease was the malmorto, an affection which in some of its features resembled constitutional syphilis as much as 1 Practical Synopsis of Cutaneous Diseases ; 1819, p. 304. 2 Report on Leprosy and Yazvs in the West Indies ; 1873. 3 Pathology and Treatment of Diseases of the Skin. By J. L. Milton ; 1872, p. 288.