162 
CHARLES F. RING. 
have the right to argue that, if this plague had been, strictly 
speaking, a venereal disease, the sexual organs ought to have 
shown the first symptoms of a recent infection, whereas, as Gren- 
beck justly observes, they only became affected incidentally, in 
consequence of the general spreading of the pustules over the 
surface of the body. 
“ Nothing is more uncertain, according to every writer of that 
age, than the different degrees which the syphilitic disease passed 
through from the time of that epidemic until it reached the pres¬ 
ent development of its diversified, but yet fixed, and at all places 
and times, identical forms. The only author who alludes to this 
point, Astruc, does not furnish any satisfactory clue to this prob¬ 
lem. The seven periods in which he divides the course of syphilis, 
as so many transition stages to the present chronic form of this 
disease, can only be regarded as a substitutive explanation of the 
real facts. Even Fernelius, who was a contemporary witness of 
that epidemic, and who regards the subsequent chancre-syphilis 
as a gradual weakening and the precursor of a final and complete 
effacement of that epidemic, is unable to account for the connec¬ 
tion of these two diseases, or for the passage of the one into the 
other, but contents himself with stating that the now prevalent 
(in the year 1540) “ lues venerea ” did no longer, like the former 
“ morbus gallicus,” infect people by the air, but solely by sexual 
connection, or by nursing infants at diseased breasts, or that the 
disease might be communicated by mid wives by the contact of 
infected sexual organs, or by the mouth of diseased nurslings, or 
by the spittle of infected persons when kissing, or, finally, by the 
insertion of the poison in parts denuded of their epidermis; and 
that, when the disease broke out, it manifested itself by ulcers on 
the infected parts, by buboes and discharges, and afterwards, 
after the whole organism was pervaded by the poison, by pustules 
on the skin, pains, etc. This shows that, even a few years subse¬ 
quent to the prevalence of that epidemic, our modern syphilis was 
born full-fledged, even as Minerva was born armed cap-a-pie out 
of Jupiter’s brain, without it being possible to show the different 
stages through which this disease gradually marched onward to 
its present stage.”— [Hid, p. 287-295.] 
(To he continued .) 
