Part 12

Thus we read in _Herodotus_:[243] “But as often as a _Babylonian_ has had intercourse with his wife, he sits down beside a lighted censer, and his wife does the same on the opposite side; then when morning has come, both _bathe_ themselves, for they will touch no vessel until they have washed. The same practice is followed by the _Arabians_ too.” Whether bathing after _each_ act of coition was a national custom of the _Egyptians_, we have been unable to discover, but _Clement of Alexandria_[244] states that they were forbidden, as was almost everywhere the case in Antiquity, to enter the temple without having washed or bathed themselves after sexual intercourse; while the Priests were bound to bathe after every nocturnal pollution.[245] This was equally an ordinance of the _Jews_, who at the same time were rendered by such pollution unclean till the evening. The last named People were also obliged to wash after every act of coition; at any rate _Josephus_[246] and _Philo_[247] declare it to have been so, for in the Old Testament it is nowhere enjoined. As is generally known, this custom has been kept up in the East down to the present day, even among the Christian populations,—affording a concurrent testimony to the necessity for its observance in these countries.

Whether the _Greeks_ deliberately and with intention made use of baths and bathing immediately after sexual intercourse, it is difficult to ascertain quite for certain; but it seems probable, as not only does Mythology more than once[248] make express mention of the bath after coition, but the phrase ὅσιος ἀπ’ εὐνᾶς ὤν (being holy, purified, after the couch) points to the same conclusion. Moreover there is a passage in _Lucian_,[249]—though it is quite true he often describes Roman customs,—that might be thought to prove the same.

Clearer indications are forthcoming in the case of the _Romans_, who not only must not undertake any sacred function or enter a Temple, if they had failed to bathe after carrying out coition,[250] but were also bound generally after every act of cohabitation to wash the parts brought into use. At any rate this holds good of the women, and so applies to the Roman matron (comp. the passage of _Suetonius_ quoted in § 27) as to Atia, the mother of Augustus, as well as in an even greater degree to the amica (mistress) or courtesan. The regular name for this was _aquam sumere_ (to take water).[251] Indeed there were actually special attendants _aquarioli_ (water-boys),[252] whose business it was not merely to fetch water for this purpose, but also in particular to bathe and cleanse the “filles de joie” after sexual intercourse. For this reason _Lampridius_ says of the Emperor Commodus (ch. 2), _aquam gessit, ut lenonum ministeriis probrosis natum magis, quam in loco crederes, ad quem fortuna pervexit_ (he fetched water, so that you would more readily suppose him born to perform the shameful offices of pandars than in the station whereto fortune raised him). Such cleanliness was especially obligatory on those who had to do with the preparation of food and drink, such as bakers, cooks and butlers;[253] and if we do not find it directly enjoined among many ancient Peoples, the only reason of this is that they were already accustomed to wash and bathe every morning[254] immediately on leaving their bed.

In the same way as after natural coition the parts brought into use were bathed and washed, this was also done after _unnatural_, and so we read in the Collection of Priapeia (Carm. 40.):

Falce minax et parte tui maiore, Priape, Ad fontem, quaeso, dic mihi qua sit iter? Vade per has vites, quarum si carpseris uvas Quas aliter sumas, hospes, habebis aquas—

(Standing in threatening attitude with my bristling pruning-knife and your better part, Priapus, I enquire: “Pri’thee tell me, which is my way to the fountain?” “Go through yonder vines, but if you dare to pluck the grapes, you will find, stranger, _water you must take_ elsewhere”). Clearly this is to be taken as meaning paederastia or irrumation looked upon as punishments inflicted for the theft contemplated; and shows us at the same time it was not without a “double entendre” that Priapus was set up as a direction-post to fountains, a point that _Lomeier_[255] has already brought out with perfect correctness. Again the _fellator_ after his work used to cleanse the mouth with water, as we learn from several passages in _Martial_; thus amongst other places we read in one, of Lesbia,[256]

Quod fellas et aquam potes, nil Lesbia peccas, Qua tibi parte opus est, Lesbia, sumis aquam.

(You _fellate_ and then drink water; you do no wrong in this, Lesbia; where lies your work, there Lesbia you _take water_).

If we further add to this scrupulous cleanliness the quiet life led by the women of Antiquity, who spent most of their time, as women still do in the East, reclining, it is evident that in spite of the predisposing influence of Climate, injurious secretions from the vagina and uterus, or indeed ulcerations of these parts, must—speaking generally, and in proportion—have occurred but rarely. Moreover such maladies of the sort as were contracted were quickly got rid of again spontaneously, for very often even at the present day rest and cleanliness suffice by themselves for the removal of primary affections of the genitals. On the other hand it cannot be denied that a careless non-observance of these primeval laws of cleanliness must have then avenged itself all the more severely on the offending individual, and given occasion for the setting up of incurable diseases.

But great as the counteracting effect of the frequent use of baths in Antiquity was on the rise of diseases in general, and of those resulting from sexual excesses in particular, none the less in other ways did these same baths, directly or indirectly, _give occasion for their rise and spread_. As to their _direct_ effect in this direction,—we certainly find but scanty evidence of any in the authorities, and even such as _are_ forthcoming may very possibly be referred to the head of general want of cleanliness[257]. Still in view of the fact that at the present day the cellar baths of the Jews contribute to some degree to the spread of disease, and especially of skin-disease of different types, as did baths generally in the Middle Ages, the conjecture is surely justified that similar results followed in Antiquity, especially at Rome under the Emperors.

_Indirectly_ maladies consequent upon sexual excesses were helped on by the mere fact that the ancient Baths afforded manifold opportunities for such excesses. The bath-attendants, or _aquarioli_ (water-boys), who fetched the water for bathing, not only carried on vicious practices with the women frequenting the place themselves, but also made a business of procuration, as already pointed out just above, p. 214. The lascivious Roman Ladies took their own slaves with them to the Baths, that they might attend upon their mistresses.[258] At first the same bathing Establishments were used equally by both sexes, but not at the same time; and according to _Dio Cassius_,[259] _Agrippa_ would appear to have first, 721 A. U. C., established the public Baths at Rome for men and women, from which place later on Baths open to both sexes were introduced into Greece, as _Plutarch_[260] states. The Greeks called these Establishments ἀνδρόγυνα λούτρα (men-women, male-female, baths), and used to set up an image of Hermaphroditus in front of them.[261] In the Imperial period, when all shame was laid aside and Heliogabalus himself _in balneis semper cum mulieribus fuit_ (always visited the Baths in company of the women) (_Lampridius_ ch. 2), the use of the Baths both by men and women, and this at the same time, had become an established custom, as may be seen from several passages of _Martial_;[262] and it was in vain the Emperors _Hadrian_,[263] _Marcus Antoninus_[264] and _Alexander Severus_[265] endeavoured to restrain the abuse by enactments. These were just as unavailing as were the invectives of the Fathers of the Church.[266]

The Bathing Apartments, from which antique Roman modesty had excluded almost every glimmer of external light, were now patent to the eyes of the passer-by. Fitted up with every device of the most refined luxury,[267] they were transformed into regular brothels;[268] and accordingly were not allowed to open their doors earlier than one hour before the ordinary establishments of this nature.

The same opportunities which the Baths gave for vice with women, they afforded no less for vice between men,—for paederastia. There it was that amateurs looked about for _bene vasatos_ and καλλιπύγους, (men with fine instruments, men with handsome buttocks), and this among the Greeks as well as among the Romans,[269] though the latter in this as in other things beat the record of all other nations.

THIRD SECTION.

Relation of the Physician to Diseases consequent upon the Use or Misuse of the Genital Organs.

§ 38.

In the preceding Sections we have become acquainted with the various influences capable of favouring or counteracting the rise of diseases consequent upon the use or misuse of the genitals in Antiquity. At the same time we have shown how a multitude of affections of the most different kinds attacked, as a result of the unnatural gratification of sexual desire, those parts which under these circumstances had to undertake the rôle of the genital organs of the one or the other sex. Thirdly we have brought forward in the course of the enquiry at any rate some examples, proving beyond a doubt that the sexual parts themselves too under favourable external conditions sometimes became diseased as the consequence of indulgence in sexual intercourse. Still these results were for the most part based on the evidence of non-medical Writers, for of set purpose we abstained as much as possible from calling the professional Writers into Court on these points, so as to be able to treat in their proper mutual connexion whatever statements these latter have left us as to the maladies in question. This course appeared to us all the more necessary, as it is precisely the medical evidence which the opponents of the existence of Venereal disease in Antiquity believe themselves able to utilize in justification of their opinions.

But before we proceed to the detailed examination of the actual statements, it would seem expedient to get an answer to the following question: _whether indeed the Physicians of Antiquity generally were in a position to acquire an adequate knowledge of the bodily consequences of vicious living?_ In fact on the correct answer to this question obviously depends the correct appreciation of the medical Writings as sources for the History of Venereal disease. Only under the condition that this question may be answered in the affirmative, can the evidence supplied by the Physicians be regarded as satisfactory for their own period. That it cannot of course be so for all periods, has been pointed out already in our examination of the authorities for Antiquity generally. Indeed for long periods of time Physicians had no special _locus standi_, inasmuch as each individual in the case of the most usual maladies endeavoured to help himself, and if the family recipes left him stranded, then betook himself with prayers for assistance to the Gods and their intermediaries on earth, the Priests. This still continued, even after the Physicians had won their recognition as a special profession, and we find accordingly throughout Antiquity popular, sacerdotal, and professional or _medical_ medicine, if we may be allowed the expression, continuing to exist simultaneously side by side, and not a trace anywhere of the ridiculous limitation according to which no man has a right to be well without the help of a doctor.

Now having made it clear by what we have said, that in order to gain knowledge of a disease in Antiquity it is by no means enough to go to the Physicians only, even when such existed, that the latter should never be regarded as sole possessors of whatever was known from the point of view of pathology and therapeutics, we are bound to apply the same rule in the case of diseases consequent upon vicious habits. Of this the foregoing Sections contain amply sufficient proofs. It has there been shown how the genital organs were under the protection of special deities. Diseases affecting them were ascribed to the vengeance of the said deities, as at Athens to Dionysus, at Lampsacus to Priapus. To them sufferers had recourse to win by their prayers the removal of the divine anger, as well as its consequences; and all this happened not only in times when Physicians did not as yet exist, but no less when they did and in defiance of them, as the poems of the Priapeia sufficiently prove.[270] How long these ideas lived on is shown by the pictures _Philo_ (p. 315) and _Palladius_ (p. 318) draw of their times, while the XVth. and XVIth. Centuries reproduced the same scenes.

The most obvious reason for this no doubt was the _enigma presented by the origin_ of diseases of the genitals, particularly for any one unacquainted with the existence of contagions and their modes of activity. The man who with a healthy penis had accomplished coition, observed some days afterwards, though without resenting the fact, a mucous discharge to have been set up, or an ulcer, pustule, or what not, to have appeared. The cause of these affections he sought for in vain, for of course the mere act of coition was the very last thing he was likely to regard as such. Rather accustomed, wherever the cause of any phænomenon was unknown to him, to ascribe it to the intervention of the deity, he saw in his complaint likewise the Θεῖον (divine) as eventual cause. Naturally therefore it was divine assistance, and not human, that would avail to relieve him of his pain. Long after this time moreover, when men had ceased to refer all diseases to the vengeance of the gods, and now discovered natural causes for maladies of the genitals, as for other diseases, anything rather than just the act of coition was looked upon as cause of the observed effects, as indeed is the case to this day among the Turks,[271] and as the earliest Writers on Venereal disease abundantly show to have been so in their time. That the Physicians were no exceptions to this rule, we shall show on a later page.

A much more weighty reason however why the patient attacked by some affection of the genitals turned not to men (Physicians) for help, but to the Gods, and the Priests who represented them, was the feeling of _shame_. Since first Adam and Eve had recourse to the fig-leaf, it has ever been a habit among all peoples of the ancient as of the modern world to withdraw the procreative parts from the view of others by covering them. But above all did the Ancients regard the exposure of these parts[272] one of the severest trials to which modesty could be exposed; and rightly enough therefore designate them by the name of _pudenda_, αἰδοῖα, _the parts of shame_. Neither the wide extension of Phallic worship, nor yet the compulsory exposure of the Ephebi[273] and the naked exercises of maidens and youths at Sparta[274], can fairly be cited in this connexion as proofs to the contrary.

In our own day the most accomplished voluptuaries are in no wise shocked at undertaking in secret the most shameful doings, but yet when it comes to showing the Physician the diseased instruments of their bestial lusts, often put this off so long as to run great risks of entirely losing the signs of their manhood; and without a doubt it was the same at the period when habitual depravity had reached its culminating point of enormity. Even Priapus himself asks (Carm. 3):

Nec mihi sit crimen, quod mentula semper operta est.

(Nor let it be laid as a crime against me, that my member is ever covered up.) If with this is compared the poem from the Priapeia quoted on p. 74 of Vol. I., no one can fail to agree with us when we say that the field of observation open to Physicians in Antiquity with regard to diseases of the genitals can never have been at all extended. Even the Priests, at any rate in later times, were only resorted to in the more serious instances; but even so their journals of cases, supposing them ever to have kept such, would have been a far better source of information than those of the Physicians. We find a confirmation of this in the Mosaic Books of the Law, which contain the earliest and clearest delineations we possess of affections of the genital organs both in men and women.

But if men were so reluctant, how much more so must women have been, who were universally held to have committed a crime if they had given any part of their body to the eyes of a stranger. Just as the assistance of the Physician was disdained in childbirth, and to account for the fact the fable of Agnodicé invented, in the same way in complaints of the genitals women hesitated to submit themselves to the inquisition of the Physician. But seeing the female sexual organs are pre-eminently the home and breeding place of Venereal disease, this closed what was precisely the most direct way to a correct understanding of maladies of the genitals. The ancient Physicians, like our own forefathers, could at best make leucorrhœa the universal scape-goat; and accordingly even _Galen_, as we shall find presently, laid no stress on the circumstance, and drew no inference from it, that wherever men were attacked by gonorrhœa, the women with whom they had had coition likewise suffered from the complaint.

Further, to this general sense of shame was added a certain timidity before the professional status of real Physicians as a class, as well as the pretty universally prevalent idea of the _ignominiousness of a sickness brought on by a person’s own fault_, at any rate among the educated part of the population. This comes out in the following passage of _Plato_,[275] where he says: “Does it appear to you disgraceful to stand in need of medical help, when it is not wounds at all or such sicknesses as depend on the seasons that have befallen, but when a man through indolence and a way of life such as we have noted (i. e. a very luxurious one), is filled full of fluxes and accumulations of wind like a sea, giving occasion to the noble sons of Asclepius to designate these complaints by the names of superfetations and catarrhs?” This was more than a mere expression of individual opinion; there is no doubt affections of the genital organs, more especially if their relation to sexual intercourse was known, belonged to the class of diseases held to be most disgraceful,[276] and the Poet is justified in saying:

_Diis me legitimis nimisque magnis_ Ut Phoebo puta, filioque Phoebi _Curatum dare mentulam verebar_.

(To the lawful gods, deities too exalted for me, such for instance as Phoebus, and Phoebus’ son, I feared to entrust my member for cure.) Thus it was not to the “noble sons of Asclepius”, in other words the Physicians, who treated freemen only, that patients resorted for help, but to the gods, or else to the medical underlings (ὑπηρέται τῶν ἰατρῶν,—subordinate assistants of the physicians), to the slave-doctors and quacks, who plied their trade in the doctor’s shops,—establishments where, as we have seen above, paederasts and pathics foregathered. Exactly the same state of things prevailed down to the middle of the last Century; and to this day a majority of such sufferers rarely as a matter of fact come under any other hands.

The knowledge and observations of these Cullers of simples and Compounders of balsams, if indeed as a rule they really possessed the former, or knew how to make the latter, necessarily perished on their decease, or at best were passed on by tradition to their successors in the doctor’s shops, without professional Physicians or medical Science being one whit advantaged. To such men it was a matter of perfect indifference what was the origin of the disease for which they sold their powders and decoctions, for as _Plato_ (De legg. IV. 720) says, they paid no attention to the existing conditions of disease, and did not care to give a thought to any such thing. But at any rate,—and this was the chief point,—the patient was spared a humiliating confession, and was glad enough to buy the privilege even at the cost of possible ruin to his health. We must further remember that the “filles de joie” in Greece and at Rome were mostly slave-women, who from the very fact of their status could make no claim to treatment by free-born physicians, and that during the flourishing period of Greek medicine under the Hippocratic school it was chiefly persons of the lowest station or else sailors and foreign traders and the like who sought enjoyment in the arms of prostitutes. Such men by their constant change of abode made all continued observation a simple impossibility, so that the very imperfect knowledge possessed by the scientifically trained Physicians with regard to diseases of the genitals and their consequences need occasion little surprise.

It is true of course that at the period of universal degradation of morals Physicians must have found no lack of opportunities for observation; but the great majority of them were incapable of utilizing these, actually blocked the way of set purpose, as we shall see presently, that led in the direction of more accurate investigation, or else troubled their heads little about the cultivation of Science or the systematic record of observations. The latter, if they had published them, whether in writing or orally, could only have been detrimental, particularly in the case of physicians of the character of Charidemus’ medical attendant,[277] to their own interests. In fact they were bound to call all their subtlety into play for the express purpose of concealing the true cause of diseases of this type, a circumstance which no doubt we have to thank for a large number of the extravagant and often more than ludicrous statements regarding the origin of Venereal disease in the XVth. and XVIth. Centuries.

But as a matter of fact the public itself was no less careful to guard the secret, as we gather from _Martial_,[278] as well as from the fact that _Galen_ felt himself constrained even in his day to compose a special Treatise on dissimulated diseases. This sort of intentional deception on the part of patients was so much the easier, as Physicians in those times, as said above, in virtue of their pathological views,—some of which indeed may very well have originated in this way,—were little accessible to the truth. For these reasons they deserved, at any rate to some degree, the satiric lash of Martial; and were very generally ridiculed by the more discerning of the laity. This comes out in the important words of _Appuleius_ (Metamorph. X. 211.) as follows: “Crederes et illam fluctuare tantum vaporibus febrium: nisi quod et flebat: _Heu medicorum ignavae mentes!_ Quid venae pulsus, quid caloris intemperantia, quid fatigatus anhelitus et utrimque secus iactatae crebriter laterum mutuae vicissitudines? _Dii boni! Quam facilis, licet non artifici medico, cuivis tamen docto venereae cupidinis comprehensio_, cum videas aliquem sine corporis calore flagrantem.” (Could you imagine her so tempest-tossed by the vapours of mere fever,—not to mention that she kept forever crying: “_Oh! the sorry wits of doctors!_” What means the throbbing vein, the excessive temperature, the labouring breath, and the hurried interchange of heaving flank, panting now on one side now on the other? _Great heavens! how easy the diagnosis, not of course for a medical expert, but for any one learned in the symptoms of love_, when you see a person burning, yet without bodily fever-heat).