INTRODUCTION xxiii

toms follow. Often, for as much as four months after the infec—
tion, there were no signa man)/festa; then ulcers appeared on
the genital organs, then pains in the joints, arms, shoulders
and ankles.  The whole body was covered with hideous pustules,
informes achores.' Next came gummata, like the exudations
on the bark of a cherry—tree. 'The mucus collected into a callus
and sleep was impossible. He describes the caseof Cenomano, ?
a& rich, athletic, handsome youth, who died of the malady in its
most horrible form.  Book I closes with a lament for the death
of Marcantonio della Torre, the anatomist, and about sixty
impassioned verses on the woes of Italy, suffering at once from.
€plague, terrible famine, war and slaughter''; but the French
Sickness was the most cruel of all her misfortunes, for it ruined
the purity of Italian blood. 'This is a fine passage, perhaps
the best verse that he ever wrote.

Remedies

Book II describes the remedies; they should be used without
delay. 'There follows, though in less detai!, much the same
advice as to exercise, exclusion of fresh air during treatment,
etc. as occurs in Confagion and in Vigo's treatise; and a similar
list of things to eat, drink and avoid. In spring and autumn,
moderate blood—letting. At all seasons, use, first, decoctions
of cedar or dictamon; he specifies many other herbs that will
purge and expel the humors. But mercury (quicksilver) is
usually found to be the best remedy. In the manner of Virgil,
he tells the myth of the Syrian hunter Ilceus, a name not found
elsewhere, who was punished with this disease for shooting a&
saered stag. ^ He is told to visit a subterranean nymph, Lipare,
who has charge of all the metals. 'Thrice she dips him in the
fount of mercury beneath Etna, and with her hands pours it
over his body. 'The pustules are—cleansed away, and his limbs

 

of Fracastorius, says, in De Re Poefica V, that a dog licked its
master's plasters and developed syphilis.

: In prose, he does not use this term for the pustules of syphilis,
though he says they are not unlike those from which children suffer,
in achores.

2 'The Cenomani were a Celtic tribe who occupied Verona before
the Romans. He means a Veronese youth, perhaps a patient.  In
his poem to Marguerite of Navarre, he says he is $nfer Cenomanos,
i. e. in Verona or the neighborhood.