Book II SV PHILIS 157

the hair falls out, there is & white sticky sort of substance coex—
tensive with the roots of the hair. In fact I have seen cases
of persons, whose beards had fallen out, who had under the
skin a sort of humor precisely of that kind and coextensive with
the beard. 'This may very easily happen in the present case
from the evaporation and secretion proceeding from that sub—
. stance, (which is now almost transparent like glass, and made of
coagulated vapors), when they have reached the roots of the
hair. Whatever may be the cause, we must conclude that this
disease has now entered on its old age, and that the time is
not far off when it will cease to propagate itself, even by con—
tagion. For the substance becomes colder from day to day
and more earthy, and in that sort of substance fewer and weak—
er germs are generated from day to day. For this reason, that
contagion is not so easily contracted today as it was formerly,
and it will come to pass, at length, that it will be unable to
propagate itself and will cease to be.  But later it will return,
when the same principles and causes return. In certain parts
of the world, however, it is domesticated, as in the so—called
Spanish Island (Hayti)5* and in the other adjacent islands; be—
cause, as I have said, in those places there prevail by nature
conditions which are favorable for the generation of this disease,
conditions which have been conyveyed to us in the lapse of time.
In the same way elephantia is domesticated in Egypt and
Judaea. In what has been said, I have so far defined the prin—
ciples and causes of this new contagion, the substance of which
it consists, with what it is analogous, its accidents and its symp—
toms.