470 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1720. 



found out by accident. For, he tells us, when he was a young practitioner, 

 having applied both the natural and artificial arsenic to the leg of a patient, it 

 so mortified the flesh, as surprised him ; but by proper digestives, the eschar 

 coming off, and leaving the bone bare, he scraped it with an instrument for 

 several days, and dressed it with incarnatives, designing to have ingendered flesh 

 on it ; but this proving unsuccessfol, he continued to scrape it, till he observed 

 it move under the instrument, after which having separated it, he found the 

 sore covered with new flesh, and that the bone was 4 inches in length, 2 

 in breadth, and very thick, on the removal of which the patient was soon 

 cured. 



Thus it is probable, that this observation of this great man led our prede- 

 cessors to practise the very same method; and at this day in our hospitals we 

 treat the venereal nodes on the shins exactly as is here described, where we 

 observe the same appearances, he so long before noticed ; and it is not to be 

 doubted, but the boonhawe and our venereal nodes are the same disease. By 

 the appearance of some of the last of the abovementioned symptoms, we in- 

 fallibly judge the patient has had the infection upon him a considerable time, 

 and that the disease is making its gradual advances, to the corrupting and de- 

 stroying of the whole frame of the body. That this was the conclusion of the 

 miseries of those persons, that gave themselves up to the embraces of lewd 

 women, in those early times, as well as now, I cannot better prove than by 

 those remarkable instances in a MS. written and collected by one Tho. Gas- 

 coigne, a doctor of divinity, in Lincoln College, Oxon, whose words are, 

 " Novi enim ego magister Thomas Gascoigne, licet indignus, sacrae theologiae 

 doctor, qui haec scripsi et coUegi, diversos viros, qui mortui fuerunt ex putre- 

 factione membrorum suorum genitalium et corporis sui; quae corruptio et pu- 

 trefactio, ut ipsi dixerunt, causata fuit per exercitium copulas carnalis cum mu- 

 lieribus. Magnus enim dux in AngliA, scil. J. de Gaunt, mortuus est ex tali 

 putrefactione membrorum genitalium, et corporis sui, causat^ per frequenta- 

 tionem mulierum. Magnus enim fornicator fuit, ut in toto regno Angliae di- 

 vulgabatur, et ante mortem suam jacens sic infirmus in lecto, eandem putre- 

 factionem Regi Angliae Ricardo secundo ostendit, cum idem rex eundem ducem 

 in SU& infirmitate visitavit ; et dixit mihi qui ista novit unus fidelis sacrae theo- 

 logiae baccalaureus, Willus etiam longe vir maturae aetatis et de civitat. Londo- 

 nii, mortuus est ex tali putrefactione membrorum suorum genitalium et corporis 

 sui, causat^ per copulam carnalem cum mulieribus, ut ipsemet pluries confessus 

 est ante mortem suain, quum manu sua propria eleemosynas distribuit ut ego 

 novi anno Dni. 1430." 



Now it is plain that those instances mentioned from Arden, or these from 



