I have endeavoured specially to prove that syphilitic sores owe their distinctive characters to the action of the poison on particular tissues :-that there is but one poison, which may produce any of the varieties of secondary or constitutional symptoms:-and that the occurrence of bubo, whether suppurating or not, has no influence upon the constitutional effects. Whether I have succeeded, must remain for others to decide.

HOLMES COOTE.

4, Norfolk Street, Strand.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION.

I FEAR that in professing little veneration for the authority of the ancients in the matter of the Venereal Disease, and in refusing to quote copiously from their works, I shall be deemed guilty of entertaining heretical opinions, and of promulgating a dangerous doctrine. But when we reflect how little we know of the history of this disease, and how difficult we find it to recognise its various forms, with all the advantages of modern research, we may imagine the obscurity which must pervade the writings of men living in a superstitious age, and forcing a way by their unassisted genius through a mass of almost impenetrable ignorance which surrounded them. I may at once state my opinion that both Gonorrhoea and Syphilis are coexistent with promiscuous sexual intercourse as practised by the inhabitants of Europe; i. e., where one woman receives several men. They scarcely exist among the inhabitants of the East, where the practice of polygamy is universal, unless, indeed, it has been introduced, as is the case in our Indian possessions, by the formation of large military depôts, or the construction of cities. The conditions necessary to call forth the venereal disease seem to be the same universally: namely, large assemblages of men, with an inadequate proportion of females.

That the early writers, whether Jewish or Arabian, should have made but slight mention of this disease may be explained by the fact, that the inhabitants of the countries along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean have from time immemorial lived for the most part an isolated and abstemious life, either wandering as nomad tribes over a great extent of uncultivated country, or occupying a little group of huts. of huts. When larger towns were formed, a system of shutting females up from public gaze was gradually introduced, and with this practice came the habit of very early marriages. Add to this, that the climate is enervating and exhausting to the male; and, as regards the female, a girl is marriageable at twelve, and sinks into a comparatively old woman by thirty. The one sex is not very earnest in pursuit, and the other is endowed with the sexual passion for a short time. The practice of polygamy seems to me to have been introduced in consequence of the rapid evanescence of female beauty and attractiveness.

In 1855 I was stationed for a few months in Smyrna, and was struck at once with the rarity of venereal disease in any form among the inhabitants, who applied freely for professional advice. Cases of gonorrhoea occasionally happened among the Greeks; and the leader of a band of robbers, since executed in the neighbourhood of the town, obtained from a medical man, whom he took prisoner during our residence there, a prescription for that disease, to be used in case of emergency. I saw two cases of excoriation of the glans and prepuce, with puriform discharge, among English visitors to the place, and a case of gonorrhoea in a ward-orderly. Several of my colleagues had a somewhat similar experience; but all