On the pathology and treatment of gonorrhœa / by J.L. Milton.

  • Milton, J. L. (John Laws), 1820-1898.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the pathology and treatment of gonorrhœa / by J.L. Milton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    ON GONOERHCEA CHAPTER I. HISTORY. That gonorrhoea existed from a very early period is probable enough, but much of what has been written respecting the question is unreliable and conjectural in the highest degree. Mr. Berkeley Hill, quoting from Dabry, says that it was described 4,500 years ago in the collection of medical treatises made by the emperor Ho-Ang-Ti. I have not been able to obtain access to the work Mi*. Hill quotes from, but I always heard that he was extremely painstaking, and I see nothing improbable in the statement. If, however, the Chinese writer's description of gonorrhoea be so full and ac- curate that we can unequivocally recognize the disease, it is not merely the earliest, but the only unimpeachable, account to be found for at least thirty-six centuries after. M. Chabalier traces the descent of gonorrhoea from the time of Moses downward, in a memoir perhaps never yet surpassed for elegance and scholarship ; but while I cheerfully accord to it all praise on this head, I must contend that his desire to carry his point sometimes gets the upper hand of his judgment. The cause could scarcely have been taken up by a more able advocate, but even in his hands it is one of the weakest ever yet argued for. He begins with the often-cited passage from Leviticus, about a person with a running issue out of his flesh. He maintains that this must be gonorrhoea, although in the very next verse we are told that such a person is equally unclean, whether his flesh run with or be stopped from his issue ; as if any human being could identify a complaint described in such terms, which so far as we can understand them at all, might just as easily mean an ulcer of the leg with or without proud flesh in it. The fact is that men speak very confidently about diseases, e.g., syphilis, lepra, ele- phantiasis Gra?corum and furunculus, being portrayed in the writings of 1 Syphilis and Local Contagious Diseases, p. 6. 1868. 2 These pour le Doctorat en Medecine. 1860.