INTRODUCTION XXV

stands near the altar to be sprinkled with the blood of a caJf.
He is told the tale of the lost island, Atlantis,' which for its
luxury and pride sank in a single night. **But some Atlantids
were saved, and we are their descendants; as a further punish—
ment, and for our later misdeeds, this distemper (Zues) afflicts
us^alT/*'

Syphilus

He tells how Syphilus, shepherd of King Alcithous in Hayti,
when his flocks died from drought, renounced the cult of Apollo
and built altars in honor of his master.  AII, including the king,
accepted this change of religion. Apollo sent a new disease
(ignota 4lluvies), of which Syphilus was the first victim. His
limbs were covered with furpes achores; he could not sleep, he
was convulsed, etc. 'The natives called the disease, after him,
'syphilis'.?  In classical poetry there is always a benign second—
ary deity, usually a nymph, who relieves mortals from the
effects of the jealous anger of the gods. The oracular wood—
nymph Ammerice told the natives that Apollo could not revoke
his edict; all must suffer, but the earth would send up a sacred
tree, so far unknown to the island. 'They were about to sacri—
fice Syphilus to Apollo, when the offended gods, as in the case
of Iphigenia or Isaac, substituted a calf. Here Fracastorius
adds to the long list, in the history of ritual, of 'interrupted
sacrifices' and 'modified human sacrifices!. Every year the
ceremony is renewed. 'This unhappy throng carry back to
their houses these great boughs and trunks of hyacus and expel
the contagion with its resin, which they drink. In order to

:'This l16th cent. tradition as to the preservation in the New
World of the culture of lost Atlantis, seems to have been ignored
in the lively controversies on this subject that have arisen, especially
in France, in the last twenty years.  He derived the tale of Atlantis
from Plato, Timaeus and Critias, the earliest source.

^ By placing one victim of syphilis, Ilceus, in Syria and another
in Hayti, both at remote and unspecified times, he wishes to show
both the antiquity of the disease and its w1despread character.  In
the tale of the barber!'s prescription in CorWagion, p. 147, he again
affirms his belief that syphilis is not an absolutely new disease.
But it is another thing to recognize it certainly in an ancient writer;
and I do not know what Wallis Budge (The Divine Origin of. Herb—
craft, 1928) found in Oribasius (4th cent. ^. p.), whlcä made him
conclude that the latter ^was well acquainted with syphilis'.