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The Plague of Lust, Vol. I (of 2)
Being a History of Venereal Disease in Classical Antiquity
Author: Julius Rosenbaum

Excerpt from The Plague of Lust, Vol. 1 of 2: Being a History of Venereal Disease in Classical AntiquityTO Historical Students and Medical Specialists alike it is Of the highest value and interest and in many respects an indispensable addition to their Library. The Object the Writer proposed to himself was a History of Venereal Disease, to trace its existence, symptoms, and incidence, from the earliest notices of its occurrence recorded in Literature onwards. This ambitious program he has only partially carried out in the present Work, which forms Part I. Of the projected Treatise as a whole, and deals with the Disease under its various forms and successive manifestations throughout Antiquity.

Table of Contents
Transcribers Notes
THE PLAGUE OF LUST,
TRANSLATORS FOREWORD.
AUTHORS PREFACE TO THE FIRST (GERMAN) EDITION.
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
INTRODUCTION.
Conception and Contents of the History of a Disease in general.
Possibility of the History of a Disease in General and of Venereal Disease in Particular.
Abstract of Opinions advanced at various Periods on the question of the Antiquity and First Rise of the Venereal Disease.
General Scheme of Treatment.
AUTHORITIES.
FIRST SECTION.
Influences that promoted the generation of Disease consequent upon the Use or Misuse of the Genital Organs.
1.
The Cult of Venus11.
2.
3.
4.
5.
The Lingam and Phallic Worship.
6.
7.
Plague of Baal-Peor.
8.
9.
Brothels and Courtesans111.
10.
11.
Paederastia.
12.
Diseases consequent on Paederastia.
13.
???s?? T??e?a (Feminine Disease)293.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. AUTHORITIES AND HISTORIANS.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Authorities.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Historians.
INDEX OF GREEK AND LATIN WORDS EXPLAINED IN THE TEXT, AND OF THE SUBJECTS DISCUSSED IN BOTH VOLUMES
INDEX OF AUTHORS EXPLAINED OR EMENDED.
INDEX OF GREEK WORDS EXPLAINED.
INDEX OF LATIN WORDS EXPLAINED.
INDEX OF SUBJECTS.
FOOTNOTES:

It is now six years ago, during my residence in Berlin, and with a view to a historical Survey of miliary fevers, that I began a closer and more systematic study of the Epidemics of the XVth. and XVIth. Centuries. In the course of these inquiries, my attention was inevitably directed to the subject of Venereal disease, which exerted so powerful an influence at that epoch both on the physical and the moral life of nations. Accustomed as I was to regard History as being something more than a mere quasi-mechanical aggregation of facts, the observation was soon borne in upon me that only through a painstaking examination of the contemporary conditions of epidemic disease could the Venereal Disease of the period be really understood. Consequently, I felt I must isolate this terrible scourge of humanity from the general survey,so general as to be well-nigh all-embracing,and consider it as a phnomenon apart.
Once started on these lines, I occupied myself especially with the subject, and arrived at the surprising result, that the Venereal Disease of the XVth. Century owed its terrible characteristics solely and entirely to the contemporary exanthematic-typhodal Genius Epidemicus, which made itself known in the South of Europe by petechial fevers and by the Sudor Anglicus (English Sweating-fever) in the North. I concluded further that the disease was not epidemic at all, merely liable to arise under the epidemic influence; and must consequently have been already extant before the arrival of the said Genius Epidemics.
Time and circumstances compelled me to remain satisfied provisionally with this general conclusion, and only after I had fixed my abode permanently at Halle, could I resume my earlier investigations. Yet again these were interrupted, partly by my work on the Diseases of the Skin for the Dictionary of Surgery edited by Prof. Blasius, partly by my Habilitation (formal entry on the Staff) at the University of that place, to which I had been repeatedly invited after the unexpected death of the late Dr. Baumgarten-Crusius. Eventually, I was enabled to devote the greater part of my leisure hours to this subject, one which in the meantime was never quite lost sight of. I began to sift and arrange the material I found accumulated, but in a short time I convinced myself that in its treatment I had to strike out a different road from that followed hitherto if I ever intended on my own account to reach important results; and I felt it would be impossible to complete the whole Survey in a single moderate-sized volume. Consequently, I proceeded to limit myself to the inquiry whether or no Venereal disease had been extant in Ancient times, and it is this investigation that I now publish as a first Part of the History of Venereal disease.
The general plan I have followed in my treatment of the subject is sufficiently explained in the Introduction; while a perusal of the text will show in what relation my investigations stand towards those of my predecessors, and at the same time to what extent these have been made use of, or indeed could be made use of, in my work. Owing to the very nature of the subject the Survey as a whole was bound to assume a critical character, dealing as it does not solely with the history of the Disease, but also with the examination of an extensive array of views and opinions already formulated. The conduct of this examination I leave the reader to judge of; but I believe I can confidently assert it was always the matter, never the man, that I subjected to critical treatment. Accordingly, I laid little stress on brilliant results, and made no effort to conceal lack of facts by dazzling hypotheses; instead, I made it my supreme object to come at the truth as near as possible and preferred to confess my ignorance, if the help and authorities I had at my disposal failed me, rather than advance propositions the baselessness of which a sober criticism is only too soon in a position to demonstrate.
I imposed this law on myselfto believe no mans mere assertion; to depend on original authorities; to look at every passage with my own eyes, and read it in connexion with its context; to pick out the plain fact observed from the Chaos of hypotheses, and to accept as exact only what I could deduce from the authorities myself and see to be the evident purport of the observation,absolutely unconcerned how each arbitrary theory might be affected or the sacrosanct authority of such or such a Scholar stand or fall. Why should we deem great men infallible? why find it impossible to honor them and yet dissent from them in your opinion?I felt I owed to my reader corresponding impartiality in the statement of the facts and arguments based upon them. If I was determined to take nothing on trust but to examine and see for myself, I could not reasonably demand faith from the reader and refuse to communicate to him the proofs and original documents I had drawn upon. It was no case of mere quotation from books,I was bound to lay open the original evidence for his inspection. These words of Henslers I took as my guiding-principle, and if I have deviated from their standard in the Third Section, this only happened because the greater part of the passages there quoted have been repeatedly handled by my predecessors, and I feared to increase the bulk and consequently the cost of the Book to the prejudice of the reader.
I am well aware that the method I have adopted hardly corresponds with the taste of the present day; and if the public choose to find in my work nothing but an idle display of quotations, I cannot fail to be mortified. Nevertheless, I prefer to encounter, if needs be, the reproach of pedantry rather than that of superficiality. With the difficulties, I met with in connection with particular investigations I need not trouble the reader at greater length, as they are sufficiently familiar to everyone engaged in similar researches. I may be allowed to point out what a task was presented by the co-ordination of so considerable a number of scattered data. These I had, in the almost total absence of earlier works on the same subject, to collect mostly by my own reading from very widely separated Authors; and anything like the symmetry of arrangement was made still more difficult when, as occurred more than once, the discovery of a single passage forced me to entirely re-write a substantial part of my manuscript, often within a short time of its going to Press. For the same reason, the indulgent reader must excuse it, if here and there a later observation involves the supplementing and in some degree correcting of a previous statement,a thing that would have been done much more frequently had I not dreaded treating my material in too rambling a fashion. It would be quite easy now to subjoin in the form of appendices a multitude of additional proofs, of course only corroborating views already laid down,proofs I owed to further reading of the Ancient authors. However absolute completeness is impossible of attainment for the individual; and I can only hope the humble request I hereby express,a request addressed especially to professional students of Antiquity,that others may favor me with contributions and remarks relevant to my subject, maybe not entirely without result. So later on perhaps the material accumulated may be utilized more efficiently if the interest manifested by the learned in my undertaking is of such a nature as to demand a re-modeling of the whole Investigation.
The necessity I found myself under of expressing this request for countenance on the part of students of Antiquity is the very thing that specially induced me to strongly recommend the First Part of my work, even on its Title-page, to their particular consideration; and it will be a source of self-congratulation if the attempts incidentally introduced to gain a better insight into the relics of Antiquity, meeting with their approval, become an inducement to the Physician in his professional studies to offer a helping hand to human weaknesses. The question at issue is nothing less than that of gaining a clear insight into the nature and origin of the operation of a Disease that destroys the very marrow of Nations. Without such insight, the Physician cannot hope, whether in the particular case or speaking generally, to obtain a radical cure; and of all forms of Disease the Venereal is pre-eminently that where obscurity in the history of the malady conditions obscurity in its curative treatment. For the first time, it is successfully proved with irrefragable certainty that the Ancients were infested with this Morbus mundane (World-disease) just as much as the Moderns. Honorable nations are freed from the shameful reproach of fathering this Complaint; and at the same time, Physicians see themselves forced to seek a reason for the untrustworthiness they recognize at the present day as belonging to the so-called Specifics, not in the nature of these remedies, but in the changes which the Disease has undergone under external influences. Moreover, they will find that the non-mercurial treatment nowadays so highly extolled is far from being the mere creature of fashion; rather it is the direct consequence of the alteration in the common and universal genius of the Complaint, which appears at this moment to be again tending to gradual disappearance. The grounds for this assertion I have already more than once explained to my hearers in my repeated Lectures on Venereal Disease; and I propose to communicate them fully in the Second Part of my History of the Disease, framed on the same principles as the First.
When I shall publish this Second Part, if ever, will depend first on the reception of the preceding volume; secondly on whether more favorable external conditions provide the leisure that is indispensably necessary for Historical investigations of the sort, and at the same time put at my disposal a more complete literary apparatus than has hitherto been the case. For historical-medical studies in general there exists hardly a more unfavourable1 place than Halle; and this is specially and peculiarly so with regard to epidemic diseases. As far as Venereal Disease is concerned the whole literary wealth of our University Library amounts to something like ten or twelve Works, half of which are all but worthless. I myself shrank from no expense to obtain possession of the literary helps required, and my collections, particularly on the subject of Epidemics, might boast of being not inferior to those of any private individual; yet they are quite insufficient for my purpose, so much, especially from the earlier Centuries, being no longer procurable by way of purchase. Source: Wikipedia

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