CHAP. I.
* 1.1THe French call the Lues Venerea the Neapolitan disease; the Italians and Germans (as al∣so the English) term it the French disease; the Latines call it Pudendagra: others name it otherwise. But it makes no great matter how it be called, if the thing it self be under∣stood: Therefore the Lues Venerea is a disease gotten or taken by touch, but chiefly that which is in unclean copulation; and it partakes of an occult quality, commonly taking its original from ulcers of the privy parts, and then further manifesting it self by pustles of the head, and other external parts; and lastly, infecting the entrails and inner parts with cruel and nocturnal torment∣ing pain of the head, shoulders, joints, and other parts. In process of time, it causeth knots and hard tophi:* 1.2 and lastly, corrupts and fouls the bones, dissolving them, the flesh about them being oft times not hurt; but it corrupteth and weakneth the substance of other parts, according to the condition of each of them, the distemper and evill habit of the affected bodies, and the inveteri∣tion or continuance of the morbifick cause. For some lose one of their eies, others both: Some lose a great portion of their eie-lids, other-some look very gastly, and not like themselves, and some become squint-eied. Some lose their hearing, others have their noses fall flat, the palat of their mouths perforated with the loss of the bone Ethmoides, so that instead of free and perfect utterance, they faulter and fumble in their speech. Some have their mouths drawn awry, others their yards cut off, and women a great part of their privities tainted with corruption. There be some, who have the Ʋrethra or passage of the yard obstructed by budding caruncles, or inflamed pustles, so that they cannot make water without the help of a Catheter, ready to dye within a short time, either by the suppression of the urine, or by a gangrene arising in these parts, unless you succor them by the amputation of their yards. Others become lame of their arms, and other-some of their legs, a third sort grow stiff by the contraction of all their members; so that they have nothing left them sound but their voice, which serveth for no other purpose but to bewail their miseries, for which it is scantly sufficient. Wherefore should I trouble you with mention of those that can scantly draw their breath by reason of an Asthma: or those whose bodies waste with an hectik feaver,* 1.3 and slow consumption? It fares far worse with these, who have all their bodies deformed by a leprosie ariseing there-hence, and have all their throttles and throats even with putrid and cancrous ulcers; their hair falling off from their heads, their hands and feet cleft with tetters and scaly chinks: neither is their case much better, who, having their brains tainted with this disease, have their whole bodies shaken by fits of falling-sickness; who troubled with a fil∣thy and cursed flux of the belly, do continually cast forth stinking and bloody filth. Lastly, there are no kinds of diseases, no sorts of symptoms, wherewith this disease is not complicate, never to be taken away, unless the virulency of this murrain be wholly taken away, and impugned by its proper antidote, that is, argentum vivum.