Ioannis Vuieri medicarum observationum rararum Liber I

by which they are unable to walk straight, but twist their bodies now to the left, now to the right; sometimes they drag their leg behind them, not unlike those ascending steep places. These are his words: "skeletyrbe is a type of paralysis, such that one is unable to walk in a straight line, and sometimes one goes straight, sometimes one goes to the right, or the right foot [goes] to the left, and sometimes one drags the leg, just as those climbing something high." I believe Marcellus called this disease "gingipedium," from the erosion of the mouth or gums; it is called by some "gingipedium," a name feigned from the gums and injured feet.

A question occurs at this point: whether this plague was known and described by the ancients, namely the writers of our sacred and old medicine, both Greek and Arabic? While others support the affirmative part, I lean toward the negative. For Avicenna, chapter 3, fen 15, tractate 2, chapter 5, indeed recounts a certain collection of symptoms that are seen in scurvy, where he deals with the signs of splenic abscesses; yet he does not describe our scurvy, although he seems to have touched upon it quite closely. Hippocrates also, regarding enlarged spleens, writes thus in book 2 of the Predictions, in such a way that he notes certain accidents of scurvy: but it is not described as our scurvy, a peculiar disease, in the few signs that appear in diseases of an affected spleen. For he says that damaged gums and foul breath occur in those who have large spleens. "Whoever, indeed, has large spleens, and neither eruptions of blood befall them, nor foul breath, their shins have malignant ulcers, and from these, black scars." Now let us bring the words of Hippocrates to the balance and weigh them.