Note 344 — THIRD SECTION. Relation of the Physician to Diseases consequent upon the Use or Misuse of the Genital Organs.

Aretaeus, De sign. chronic. bk. II. ch. 8., θώυμα δὲ τουτέων μέζων, εἰς ὄρχιας καὶ κρεμαστῆρας ἀδόκητον ἄλγος ἐπιφοιτῇ· πολλοὺς τῶν ἰητρῶν ἥδε ἡ ξυμπαθείη λήθει· καὶ γὰρ καὶ ἐξέταμόν κοτε τοὺς κρεμαστῆρας, ὡς ἰδίην ἔχοντας αἰτίην· (And there is another thing more surprising than this, when the pain suddenly shifts to the testicles and spermatic cords. Now this sympathy between the different organs escapes many physicians; and sometimes they actually cut out the spermatic cords as if these contained the special cause of the suffering). In the edition due to Kühn’s industry the word κρεμαστῆρες is translated by musculos cremasteres dictos (the muscles called cremasteres). The expression is also found in the “De sign. acut.” II. 6., and Petit in his Commentary on the first named passage declares in all seriousness that the sympathy was sufficiently well known to anatomists, arising from the connection of the cremasteres muscles with the peritonaeum and its processes, which statement appears to rest on the datum of Galen, De usu partium bk. XIV. ch. 11. (IV. p. 193.) and De semine bk. II. ch. 5. (IV. p. 635.), where the cremasteres certainly are called μυώδη σώματα (muscular bodies) and compared with the round ligaments of the womb. Still Galen says distinctly in the latter passage that they contained arteries, veins and the spermatic ducts, in the Isagoge ch. 11. (XIV. p. 719.) ὃς (γόνος) φέρεται ἐπ’αὐτοὺς διὰ τῶν κρεμαστήρων (it,—the seed,—is conveyed to them through the cremasteres). On the other hand in the “De musc. sect.” Vol. XVIII. B. p. 997., the musculi cremasteres properly so called are clearly described, and the statement added: Τὸ δὲ ἔργον αὐτῶν ἀνατείνειν τὸν ὄρχιν· ὅθεν ἔνιοι κρεμαστῆρας αὐτοὺς ὀνομάζουσι (but their duty is to hold up the testicles, for which reason some name them the cremasteres,—suspenders). Neither Blancard-Kühn nor yet Kraus’s Lexicon give under the word “Cremaster” any meaning but that of the muscles; the same is true of Schneider. Comp. Paulus Aegineta bk. VI. ch. 61., where the spermatic cords are also called παραστάται (supporters), as also by Galen, Defin. med. XIX. p. 362. and De semine bk. I. Vol. IV. p. 565., where they are spoken of as κιρσοειδῆς παραστάται (varicose parastatae). A denomination Herophilus first made use of (Galen IV. p. 582.) and which according to Athenaeus Deipnos. bk. IX. p. 396. was likewise given to the testicles.