CHAP. XVI. How a Gonorrhoea differeth from a* 1.1 virulent Strangury.
EVen to this day very many have thought that the virulent Strangury hath some affinity with the Gonorrhoea of the Antients, but you shall understand by that which follows, that they are much different. For a Gonorrhoea is an unvoluntary effusion of seed running from the whole body to the genitals, by reason of the resolution and palsie of the retentive faculty of these parts, as it is delivered by Galen, lib. de loc. affect. This disease befalleth others by the collecti∣on of the blood and seminal matter by the vessels of the whole body, which not turning into fat and good flesh, takes its course to the genitals; but on the contrary, a virulent Strangury is a runn∣ing, or rather dropping out of the urinary passage, of a yellowish, livid bloody, filthy sanies, like to pus, or matter not well concocted, oftentimes fretting and exulcerateing the passage with the acrimony, and causing a painfull erection of the yard, and distension of all the genital parts. For in this erection there is caused as it were a convulsive contraction of these parts: And hence it is that the patients complain, that they feel as it were a string stretched stiff in that part, which draws the yard as it were downwards. The cause hereof is a gross and flatulent spirit, filling and distending by its plenty, the whole channel or hollow nerve, yea verily, the whole porous substance of the yard. If to these sumptoms this be added, that the urinary, passage be exulcecrated, a grievous pain afflicts the patient, whilst he makes water, for that the ulcers are, irritated by the sharp urine passing that way. Such a virulent strangury or running of the reines oftimes conti∣nueth for two or three, years space: but the Gonorrhoea, or running of the seed cannot endure so long, but that it, will bring the body to an extreme and deadly leanness, for that the matter of the seed is of the more benign and laudable portion of the blood, as you may perceive by those who have too immoderately used copulation but the space of one night; For such have their faces more lean and lank,* 1.2 and the rest of their bodies enervated, languisheth and becommeth dull. By this we have delivered, it may be perceived that the running of virulent strangury, is not the running of a seminal humor, fit for generation of issue, but rather of a viscous and acrid filth, which hath acquired a venenate malignity by the corruption of the whole sub∣stance.