16 -— "38; HOLTH: M.-N. KI. 
Dr. Johan Bergman supposes in his interesting book on Pompeji (Stock- 
holm 1915, p. 156) that the surgeons of the town must have had plenty 
to do on the domain of genital diseases; gonorrhoea was sure to thrive 
in the great number of brothels (Dr. Mygind). In the establishment of 
this kind close to the barracks of the gladiators is written on a wall: 
»Victorum victrix«. I will not assert that the meaning of the inscription 
has been the one I here put in it: that the victors, at any rate, might meet 
a worse treatment in this place than in the arena.  /Ze/iodoros who was 
surgeon in Rome at the time of Trajan and is mentioned in Juvenal's 
sixth satire (VI, 369 to 372) is said to have removed fleshlike growths 
from the urethra and then introduced bronze tubes (enveloped in a paper 
cover soaked and shaped and then dried) in order to prevent the growing 
together; on the fourth day he changed with tubes of tin or lead. But 
he does not seem to have known the cause: gonorrhoea, nor the real 
character of the obstacle: stricture formed by scars; bougies as we have 
them, solide sounds for the dilatation of strictures were out of the question 
(Milne). Strictures by scars in the urethra were not discovered till the 
introduction into science of the pathologic anatomy (Morgagni's: »De sedibus 
et causis morborum per anatomiam indagatis« 1761). A few years later 
clinic diagnosis and treatment began with John Hunter. 
The observations of Heliodoros soon seem to have been forgotten. 
Paullos Aiginetes (7th century) and Abulqäsim (11th century) mention no 
other causes of urinal retention than calculi in the neck of the bladder or 
urethra. 
Many of the sounds may have been used at the membrane punction 
in the operation which forensic medicine of to-day calls criminal abor- 
tion. The operation was used to a great extent by the Greeks as well 
as the Romans from the very same motives which twenty years ago Emile 
Zola complained in his novel »Fécondité«. This was not then considered 
as a crime — partly out of the theory that the life of the fetus only began 
with the birth. TERTULLIAN spoke violently against this in his sermon 
»De anima« and asserts referring to the operations performed in such 
cases that the life of the fetus begins in utero; he mentions in his sermon 
no less than four instruments used by the surgeons for the mutilation of 
the fetus. 
I will now enter more fully upon the consideration of one of the 
instruments which is of more than usual interest: Pl. IIl, 23. Though 
the active part of it was broken and was not found I believe that it is 
an Arabic eye instrument for depression of cataract, an operation which 
was practically the only one known til in 1752 Daviel discovered the 
