104 
CHARLES F. RING. 
exact knowledge, and brings new symptoms and new growths of 
morbid phenomena into the fold of syphilis which were not there 
before. Nearly all the important questions in syphilis are still in 
dispute among high authorities: Is the poison single or double 
capable of producing only one, or of yielding two diseases % Is 
it peculiar to man, or may animals also be affected ?” Again : 
“ When syphilis first began to be written about, after the outbreak 
at the end of the fifteenth century, when it went under the name 
(generally) of the French disease, it was uniformly regarded as a 
new malady. It was not confounded with other venereal maladies 
known at that date, but was uniformly described as a morbus 
novus. inanditus, incognitus, etc. 
“ The writers who described it gave vent to - their surprise in 
their words, and were unanimous in that expression. As Bassereau 
puts it: 4 There was one point upon which there was not the least 
difference of opinion between them; upon which the oldest, the 
youngest, the wisest and the most ignorant were of unanimous 
accord, namely: that none of them had ever observed anything 
analagous or similar to the French disease before the arrival of 
Charles VIII in Italy.’ ”—[Venereal Diseases, pp. 55-7.] 
Professor Otis distinguishes between the 44 new disease ” and 
the contagious venereal ulcers that were known to the older and 
oldest writers most clearly, as follows: “The literature of that 
time ascribed the locality of origin to various regions, and desig¬ 
nated it as 4 mal Anglais,’ 4 morbus Gallicus,’ 4 maladie de Naples,’ 
4 pox la grosse verole,’ 4 lues venerea,’ etc. Lt was then recognized 
as distinct from the contagious genital ulcci , the action of which 
was simply local , and had long been known, and also from 
gonorrhoea , and was ajipreciated as a constitutional disease , capable 
of hereditary transmission.” 
“ Within a comparatively short period, however, the distinc¬ 
tion between syphilis, the local ulcer (or chancroid) and gonorrhoea 
was lost sight of, and all were accepted as of common origin, dif¬ 
fering only in development from some constitutional idiosyncrasy 
or predisposition, until the latter part of the eighteenth century, 
when Benj. Bell, of London, claimed a distinct origin for gonor¬ 
rhoea, and M. Phillip Bicord, of Paris, in 1831, proved the fact 
by a long series of ingenious and conclusive experiments. M. 
