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Possibly few diseases have caused so much misery and suffering as
leprosy. The banishment from all friends and relatives, the
confiscation of property and seclusion from the world, coupled
with poverty and brutality of treatment,--all emphasize its
physical horror a thousandfold. As to the leper himself, no more
graphic description can be given than that printed in The
Ninteenth Century, August, 1884: "But leprosy! Were I to describe
it no one would follow me. More cruel than the clumsy torturing
weapons of old, it distorts, and scars, and hacks, and maims, and
destroys its victim inch by inch, feature by feature, member by
member, joint by joint, sense by sense, leaving him to cumber the
earth and tell the horrid tale of a living death, till there is
nothing left of him. Eyes, voice, nose, toes, fingers, feet,
hands, one after the other are slowly deformed and rot away,
until at the end of ten, fifteen, twenty years, it may be, the
wretched leper, afflicted in every sense himself, and hateful to
the sight, smell, hearing, and touch of others, dies, despised
and the most abject of men."
Syphilis.--Heretofore the best evidence has seemed to prove that
syphilis had its origin in 1494, during the siege of Naples by
Charles VIII of France; but in later days many investigators,
prominent among them Buret, have stated that there is distinct
evidence of the existence of syphilis in prehistoric times. Buret
finds evidence of traces of syphilis among the Chinese five
thousand years ago, among the Egyptians at the time of the
Pharaohs, among the Hebrews and Hindoos in biblic times, and
among the Greeks and Romans after Christ. Some American writers
claim to have found evidences of syphilitic disease in the skulls
and other bones of the prehistoric Indian mounds, thus giving
further evidence to the advocates of the American origin of
syphilis. The Spaniards claimed that, returning from America in
1493, Columbus brought with him syphilis. Friend says: "One thing
is remarkable; the Spaniards, upon their first expedition to
America, brought home from thence this contagious disorder, and
soon after carried another affection thither, the small-pox, of
which the Indian Prince Montezuma died." The first descriptions
of syphilis are given under the name of morbus gallicus, while
the French in return called it morbus neapolitanus or mal
d'Italie. The name of syphilis was said to have been first given
to it by a physician of Verona, in a poem describing the disease.
Inspired by heroic epics Fracastor places before us the
divinities of paganism, and supposes that a shepherd, whom he
called Syphilus, had addressed words offensive to Apollo, and had
deserted his altars. To punish him the God sent him a disease of
the genitals, which the inhabitants of the country called the
disease of Syphilus.
"Syphilidemque ab eo labem dixere coloni."
Buret traces the origin of the word syphilis from sun, with, and
filia, love, the companion of love; which means in plain language
that the pox is a disease transmitted more especially by venereal
relations. The first great epidemic of syphilis occurred between
1493 and 1496, and attacked all ranks, neither the Church nor the
Crown being spared. The ravages of this disease were increased by
the treatment with mercury which soon afterward was found in
proper doses to be a specific in this disease. It is possible
that the terrible manifestations of syphilis of which we read in
the older writers were in a great measure due to the enormous
doses of mercury. At the present day syphilis is universally
prevalent. In his excellent monograph Sturgis estimated in New
York, in 1873, that one out of 18 suffered from it; and White of
Philadelphia pronounces the opinion that "not less than 50,000
people in that city are affected with syphilis." According to
Rohe, on this basis Gihon estimates the number of syphilitics in
the United States at one time as 2,000,000.
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