312 NOTES

s Syphilis is said to have been unknown in Italy before 1494.
Other names for it are Neapolitan, Canton (it was imported into
China from Europe, about 1500), the Malady of Fracastorius,
French Pox, la grosse verole, and, in England, the Pox, or Great
Pox; see Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621; he says that in
Java "*they lie out in the sun to cure their sores'.  Pox is an attempt
to translate the Arabic collective plural, gudar, buds, bourgeons.
"The Turks called it "the Christian disease". It was sometimes
called mal de las Indias. 'The Spanish term Patursa, mentioned
by Fracastorius, defies explanation; that given by Almenar in his
Libellus ad evwiandum et expellendum morbum galicum, Venice,
1502, that it stands for pa[ssio] fur[pis] sa[furnina], throws no light.
Fracastorius probably knew the term through Almenar. Meunier!s
rendering '*Portugais," followed by Fossel, has no support. The
common Spanish term was /as bubas. For the word syphilis, see
Introduction, p. xxvi.

38 This form is a printer's error for the name of a saint who was
associated with syphilis, i. e. Saint Minus, of Neufchatel, whose
name is variously spelt in the early literature of syphilis as Meen,
Mein, Main, Maenus, Menus, Maevius, Mevius. On a Nürnberg
broadsheet is & picture of St. Minus, who had himself had the disease
blessing a sufferer from syphilis. I owe this note to Sudhoff an
Singer, The FMarkkest Printed Lüterature on Syphihs, 1925. Syphilis
was also associated with S. Roch, S. Sementius, and Job who was
thought to have had it.

s* Pliny (32—79 ^. p.), though not a physician, devoted Books
20—32 of his Natural History to medicine, medicinal herbs, etc. He
begins Book XXVI with an account of mentagra (Greek leichenes)
which, he says, first appeared in Italy in the reign of Tiberius (14—37
A. 5.) when a Roman knight brought the infection with him from
Asia. ^It did not attack women, slaves or the middle and lower
classes, but the nobility, and was conveyed mainly by kissing.*?  The
treatment was by caustics, and doctors were imported from Egypt
at great expense, ^for Egypt is the mother of such distempers.!?
^*How strange it is, ! he adds, "that there should on a sudden come
into being in some one region of the earth, some distemper which
selects certain human organs or a certain time of life, or even dis—
tinguishes between rich and poor, as though such disorders made
their choice, this to attack children, that adults, this the nobility,
that the poor!''

See the poet Martial 12.59 for ^the man with the dangerous
chin"'. In later writers this malady is called 'sycosis', or *ringworm
of the beard'; also 'acne mentagra' or simply 'mentagra.?

40 For an aecount of this famous poem see Introduction, p. xxi.
4: For caries in this sense, see p. 271.

4:8See note 29. Fournier here translates 'muscles et nerfs', Meunier
'membres et nerfs'.  Lacertus originally means the upper, muscular
part of the arm, but here may mean muscles in general.

45 Fournier translates 'or dry', and perhaps this is correct.