VOL. XXX.J PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 3/ 1 



beyond the reach of the impelled malignant matter. The heat before described, 

 which these persons are sensible of, as well now as formerly, is a consequence 

 of the excoriated urethra ; for the salts contained in the urine must necessarily 

 irritate the nervous fibrillae, and excite a heat in those parts of the urethra 

 which are divested of its natural membrane; which heat will always be observed 

 to be more or less, as the salts are diluted with a greater or less quantity of 

 urine ; a thing I have often observed in persons that have laboured under this 

 infirmity in hot weather, when the perspirable matter being thrown off in 

 greater quantities, the salts bear a greater proportion to the quantity of urine, 

 and thereby make its discharge at that time so much the more painful and 

 troublesome. 



Thus we see this very early and plain description of this disease among us to 

 be entirely conformable to the latest and most exact anatomical discoveries. 

 Here is no tone of the testicles depraved, according to Trajanus Petronius; no 

 exulceration of the parastatae, according to Rondeletius ; no ulceration of the 

 seminal vessels, according to Platerus; no seat of the disease in the vesiculae 

 seminales or prostatas, according to Bartholin ; nor in those parts and the testi- 

 cles at the same time, according to our countryman Wharton and others, who 

 have falsely fixed the seat of this disease, and whose notions, in this respect, 

 are now justly exploded ; but a single and true description of it, and its 

 situation, about 150 years before any of those gentlemen obliged the world 

 with their labours. 



As to the ancient method used to cure the disease, we are not to expect that 

 the measures our predecessors employed should be calculated to remove any 

 malignity in the mass of blood, or other juices, according to the practice in 

 venereal cases at this time ; because they looked upon the disease to be entirely 

 local, and the whole of the cure to depend upon the removal of the symptoms : 

 hence they recommended such remedies as were accommodated to the taking 

 off the inward heat of the part, and to cure the excoriations or ulcerations of the 

 urethra. The process for the accomplishing of this, I shall set down from the 

 before-mentioned John Arden, who wrote about the year 1380. His words are 

 as follow, contra incendium. Item contra incendium virgae virilis interius ex 

 calore et excoriatione, fiat talis syringa (i. e. injectio) lenitiva. Accipe lac 

 mulieris masculum nutrientis, et parum zucarium, oleum violas et ptisanas, 

 quibus commixtis per syringam infundatur, et si prasdictis admiscueris lac 

 amygdalarum melior erit medicina. There is no doubt but this remedy, used to 

 patients at this time, would infallibly take off the inward heat of the part, and 

 cure the excoriations or. ulcerations of the urethra, by which means what issued 



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