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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    lation of the whole penis taking place in less than a fortnight, possibly the very form of primary sore for which Avicenna is said to have suggested amputation of the penis, and which was so common in the middle ages; whereas I know of no disease which takes six months to do this mischief. Mr. Lee however mentions1 2 a case of slow phagedenic ulceration by which the whole penis was gradually lost, and another where part of the member was thus destroyed. But though scattered notices of this kind are to be found, more than half the time that has elapsed since the days of Celsus was to roll away before light fairly breaks upon the scene ; for it is not till we come to the writers of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, that we meet with evidence to which we can appeal as decisive in support of the position, that primary disease, at any rate, was then known. When, however, the proof does reach us, it is in a form strong enough to convince even those who are indifferent or prejudiced. In various great seats of learning and research, Milan, Bologna, Montpellier, Oxford, we find, from about the year 1270 onwards, a somewhat frequently recurring, and even more precise mention of facts, showing that the attention of think¬ ing men had been drawn to the occurrence of these lesions; and the notice of them, at so many different places and by so many different authors, seems to me decisive proof of their being already widely diffused through western Europe, while of their identity with many of the sores in the present day I fancy there can be little doubt. For nearly two centuries and a quarter before the great outbreak of syphilis, we may notice reiterated mention of such symptoms as bubo, “ imposthume of the groin,” u ulcers of the yard,” “ ulcers from pustules of the yard,” “ mortification of the substance of the yard,” all attributed to “ lying with a foul woman,” “afoul, nasty or cancrous woman,” a “woman having an ulcer of the womb,” and so on. We may read a description in at least one author, of sores piercing between the skin and flesh of the virile member, the very feature which Judd3 gives as characteristic of the “ black lion ” “ burrowing under the foreskin 1 ‘Lectures on Syphilis 1875> P- 2 A Practical Treatise on Urethritis and Syphilis; 1836, p. 197,