468 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1720. 



such a distance from the place, and they who were physicians, residing as it 

 were upon the spot, be ignorant of it, will be as much credited, as his follow- 

 ing inconsistent relation, which will sufficiently prove how little care he took 

 to be apprised of the truth of what he wrote. This very author tells us this 

 disease was unknown till the year 14g3, or thereabouts; that he himself had it, 

 when he was a child, and so consequently that it was hereditary, or from the 

 nurse. He wrote his book on this distemper at Mentz, where it was printed by 

 John ScheiFer in 4to, in the year 1519. Now if we allow him to be but 27 

 years of age when he wrote, (for he cannot be supposed to be less, who before 

 this took upon him to cure his father of the venereal disease, without the 

 assistance of any physician or surgeon,) he must have had the distemper upon 

 him, according to his own account, before ever it was in being. 



If I have in my former letter, sufficiently proved, that the first degree of the 

 venereal disease was very common among us some centuries before it is said to 

 have been known in Europe ; there will be no reason to suppose we were at 

 that time in any measure strangers to it, when it came to be confirmed ; more 

 especially, when we consider the methods of treatment in those times, which 

 consisting principally in topical applications, many patients could not possibly 

 escape having it confirmed on them. Now when it was in this confirmed state, 

 the writers of those early times considered it as a new disease, and not a con- 

 sequence of any disorder before contracted, because they were not apprised that 

 the first symptoms being removed, and the disease to appearance cured, it should 

 afterwards discover itself in such a manner, as should not seem to have the least 

 analogy with the symptoms that first attacked a part, which had been for a con- 

 siderable time free from any disorder. But because the symptoms are the only 

 true characteristics, by which we can infallibly know one disease from another, 

 it may be expected, that I produce sufficient authorities, to show that they were 

 all known and described by ancient physical and surgical writers, just as they 

 appear in the venereal disease at this day. I have sufficiently made it appear in 

 my former letter, that the first degree of this disease was anciently known in 

 England by the name of the brenning, or burning ; and that it was the same 

 thing with what we now call a clap. The symptoms, which are usually its con- 

 comitants, are the phimosis and paraphimosis, both which are accurately de- 

 scribed, and proper remedies for them set down, by the before-mentioned John 

 Arden, Esq. in another manuscript of his, curiously written on vellum, and 

 beautifully illuminated. The imprudent method of cure of this first degree of 

 the venereal malady, is sometimes attended with a caruncle in the urethra, which 

 was a disease very common here anciently : for, not to mention other early 

 writers, the abovementioned author gives the case of a certain rector, who had 



