VOL. XXXI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 473 



The learned Gilbertus AnglicuSj who flourished about the year 136o, reasons 

 concerning the manner, how it is possible a man should be infected by a leprous- 

 woman : where if we allow him to call the malignant matter, which is lodged 

 in the vagina, the semen foemininum, we shall find that he accurately describes 

 the very first venereal infection, by part of the virulent matter, being received 

 into the urethra; from whence, by the communication of the veins and arteries, 

 it is conveyed into the whole body, after which, says he, ensues its total cor- 

 ruption. 



Let us now examine the symptoms of one sort of their leprosy; for it must 

 be necessarily divided into different species, when another distemper was 

 blended with it, in which we observe such a diversity of appearances; and this 

 I shall the rather do in this place, because it will furnish us with the next 

 succession of symptoms after those already mentioned, as the venereal ozaenas, 

 the ulcers of the throat, the hoarseness, the proof of its being communicable 

 from the nurse to the child, by hereditary succession, &c. All which we find 

 to be true in the venereal disease at this day. 



Our countryman Bartholomew Glanvile, who flourished about the year 1360, 

 in his book de Proprietatibus Rerum, translated by John Trevisa, vicar of 

 Barkley, in ISQS, tells us, " some leprous persons have redde pymples and 

 whelkes in the face, out of whome oftenne runne blood and matter : in such 

 the noses swellen and ben grete, the vertue of smellynge faylyth, and the 

 brethe stynkyth ryght fowle." In another place the same author speaks of 

 " unclene spotyd glemy and quyttery, the nosethrilles ben stopyl, the wasen 

 of the voys is rough, and the voyce is horse and the heere falls." Among the 

 causes of this sort of leprosy, he reckons lying in the sheets after them ; easing 

 nature after them ; and others which the first writers on the pox thought 

 capable of communicating that contagion: also, says he, " it comyth of fleshly 

 lyking by a woman, after that a leprous man bathe laye by her; also it 

 comyth of fader and moder; and so thys contagyon passyth into the chylde, 

 as it ware by lawe of herytage. And also when a chylde is fedde wyth corrupte 

 mylke of a leprouse nouryce. He adds, by whatever cause it comes, you are 

 not to hope for cure if it be confyrmyd ; but it may be somewhat hidde and 

 lett that it distroye so soone." 



Thus we see how our author, under the name of one species of the leprosy, 

 gives a summary of the symptoms of the pox, and the several ways by which 

 it is at this time communicated. Now when these 2 diseases were anciently 

 blended together, and passed under the name of the leprosy only, it must be 

 the real cause why that disease seemed to be so rife formerly; for two distem- 

 pers, passing under one name, must necessarily make it more noticed, and 



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