Treatise on the Venereal Disease

...and listed all their names, in chronological order, to grant them thereby a kind of Herostratic immortality. Herostratic fame refers to gaining notoriety through a shameful or destructive act, named after Herostratus, who burned the Temple of Artemis in 356 BCE just to ensure his name would be remembered. Their number is, alas! very large; it stands in direct proportion to human gullibility.

In these two volumes, I have given primary consideration to the history of the venereal plagueLuftseuche The term Luftseuche (literally "air-plague") was frequently used in the 18th century to refer to syphilis, reflecting earlier theories about its transmission through the air or "miasma.", and I do not claim too much when I say: that there is no error regarding the origin of this disease which is not here corrected; no fallacy that is not exposed; no sophistry whose weakness is not shown; and no objection against the American origin At the time, a major scientific debate raged over whether syphilis originated in the Americas and was brought to Europe by Columbus’s crew (the "Columbian theory") or if it had existed in Europe previously. Girtanner is a staunch defender of the American origin theory. of the venereal plague that has not been refuted. Even possible new objections are already refuted in advance. In the first volume, which was intended primarily for the practicing physician, I dealt only briefly with the history of the venereal disease, and deferred all purely scholarly investigations until this volume. Here, however, the scholarly physician and historical researcher will now find everything that can be said on this subject; and will also, I hope, be completely satisfied. Belonging here especially are: the entire sixth book, which contains the eyewitnesses of the emerging venereal plague; pages 437 to 444, where