Treatise on the Venereal Disease

VII

of books that never existed, full of incorrectly written names, false dates, and erroneous repetitions. Even the fourth volume, for which we are indebted to the diligence of Dr. Brandis, is no more free of these than the other volumes. For example, the work by Floyer appears twice, on pages 12 and 191. Half a page regarding St. André (an addition by Mr. Brandis to Haller's work) appears on page 18 and again on page 47. Joseph Valisneri appears on pages 132 and 191. The name John Fried. Schaadel, on page 186, should be John Fried. Staedel. Jacob Rau, on page 224, should be Jacob Kaau, and, in the same place, Ernst Caspar Huhne should be E. C. Kuehn. Furthermore, Mr. Brandis states that La Mettrie Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751) was a controversial French physician and philosopher whose death date Girtanner uses here to prove a bibliographic error. translated Boerhaave's work (which was published in 1751) in the year 1753, even though, as is well known, La Mettrie died on November 11, 1751, etc. Anyone wishing to place their name alongside that of a great man should at least avoid such errors that reveal the distance between them all too clearly!

With the exception of the plague, no disease has been written about as much as the venereal diseaseLuftseuche While "Luftseuche" literally means "air-disease," it was a common 18th-century German term for syphilis, often used interchangeably with "Lustseuche" (pleasure-disease).. In the year 1740, AstrucJean Astruc Jean Astruc (1684–1766) wrote a foundational history of venereal diseases; Girtanner aims to surpass his bibliography. provided accounts and extracts from five hundred works that had come to his attention. My index contains nearly four times as many.