Note 179 — Second Part. (continued 2)

Aëtius, Tetrab, IV. serm. 1. ch. 122., Novimus quosdam audaciores qui sibi ipsis testes ferro resecarunt; castratis enim non in peius malum ipsum procedet. Neque enim temere reperias, inquit Archigenes, ullum aliquem castratum elephantiasi laborantem, neque item facile mulierem. Quare etiam quidam ex confidentioribus medicis manum admoverunt, et quotquot sane ex eis ex sectione periculum evaserunt, per consequentis curationis usum perfecte ab hac maligna affectione liberati sunt. (We know of some bolder spirits who have amputated their own testicles with the knife; for after castration the actual evil will not then proceed to any worse length. For, says Archigenes, you will not readily find any single case of a castrated man suffering from elephantiasis, nor will you easily discover a woman at all affected by this disease. Wherefore, in fact, some of the more daring practitioners have operated, and there is no doubt that such of their patients as escaped the dangerous effects of the operation, have been through the employment of subsequent precautions completely freed from this malignant complaint). Comp. Hensler, “Vom Aussatz”, (On Leprosy), p. 401. With regard to the immunity of women, an assertion likewise made in connection with mentagra (p. 288), von Roeser writes (loco citato p. 67.) referring to Venereal disease: “Above all it is now the case in Greece and Turkey that the practising physician,—and I have been assured of the fact by many persons,—exceedingly seldom meets with syphilitic female patients in his practice; that yet notwithstanding this none of the sequelæ and different forms of subsequent mischief that are usually found resulting from the disease when every kind of medical aid is neglected, are seen in patients of that sex.”—P. 71., “Only poison would seem, as a result of the secretive process exerted by the affected parts of the skin and the mucous membrane, which is much more powerful in women than in men, to be more readily eliminated from the body than is the case with men, so much so indeed that it is an almost unheard of thing in Egypt to find a female patient under medical treatment.”—still this does not justify the conclusion that women never suffered from Venereal disease, as even von Roeser himself admits. Again Larrey, loco citato p. 253., actually found himself constrained in view of the wide dissemination of the disease among the French soldiers, to establish a special hospital for infected women, in order to check the spread of the complaint.