Mephistophilis

“ Now, body, turn to air, Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell! [Thunder and lightning.] O soul, be chang'd into little water-drops, And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found! Enter DEVILS. My God, my god, look not so fierce on me! Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while! Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer! I'll burn my books!—Ah, Mephistophilis! [Exeunt DEVILS with FAUSTUS.] Enter CHORUS. CHORUS. Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, And burned is Apollo's laurel-bough, That sometime grew within this learned man. ”

“ First, wear this girdle; then appear Invisible to all are here: The planets seven, the gloomy air, Hell, and the Furies' forked hair, Pluto's blue fire, and Hecat's tree, With magic spells so compass thee, That no eye may thy body see! So, Faustus, now, for all their holiness, Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not be discern'd. FAUSTUS. Thanks, Mephistophilis.—Now, friars, take heed, Lest Faustus make your shaven crowns to bleed. MEPHIST. Faustus, no more: see, where the Cardinals come! Re-enter the CARDINALS of France and Padua with a book. POPE. Welcome, Lord Cardinals ”

“ Had I as many souls as there be stars, I'd give them all for Mephistophilis. ”

“ Away, and bring us word with speed. CARDINAL OF FRANCE. We go, my lord. [Exeunt CARDINALS of France and Padua.] POPE. Lord Raymond. [They converse in dumb show.] FAUSTUS. Go, haste thee, gentle Mephistophilis, Follow the cardinals to the consistory; And, as they turn their superstitious books, Strike them with sloth and drowsy idleness, And make them sleep so sound, that in their shapes Thyself and I may parley with this 120 Pope, This proud confronter of the Emperor; And, in despite of all his holiness, Restore this Bruno to his liberty, And bear him to the states of Germany. ”

“ MARTINO. The Emperor is at hand, who comes to see What wonders by black spells may compass'd be. BENVOLIO. Well, go you attend the Emperor. I am content, for this once, to thrust my head out at a 150 window; for they say, if a man be drunk over night, the devil cannot hurt him in the morning: if that be true, I have a charm in my head, shall control him as well as the conjurer, I warrant you. [Exeunt FREDERICK and MARTINO.] A Sennet. Enter CHARLES the German Emperor, BRUNO, DUKE OF SAXONY, FAUSTUS, MEPHISTOPHILIS, FREDERICK, MARTINO, and Attendants. ”

“ While it is certain that either parent may be responsible for transmitting the disease to the next generation, the method of transmission is not known. In the case of a syphilitic mother it is most probable that the infection is conveyed to the fœtus by the placental circulation. In the case of a syphilitic father, it is commonly believed that the infection is conveyed to the ovum through the seminal fluid at the moment of conception. If a series of children, one after the other, suffer from inherited syphilis, it is almost invariably the case that the mother has been infected. ”

“ Syphilis is one of the diseases whose transmission from parent to child is frequent enough to make it a matter of grave concern. It is, in fact, the great example of a disease which may be acquired before birth. Just as syphilis is caused only by a particular germ, so hereditary syphilis is also due to the same germ, and occurs as a result of the passage of that germ from the mother's body through the membranes and parts connecting the mother and child, into the child. ”

“ Syphilis is a chronic, infectious, and sometimes hereditary, constitutional disease. Its first lesion is an infecting area or chancre, which is followed by lymphatic enlargements; eruptions upon the skin and mucous membranes; affections of the appendages of the skin, (hair and nails) ; chronic inflammation and infiltration of the cellulo-vascular tissue, bones and periosteum, and later, often by gummata. This disease is caused by a microorganism known as the spirochaeta pallida or treponema pallidum of Schaudinn and Hoffmann. ”

“ Leaving aside a rather small group of cases, where a woman is unable to bear children due to some inborn defect or disease, the largest class of cases of sterility is due to venereal poisons, Gonorrhea, or Syphilis contracted from their husbands. In Gonorrhea, due to chronic inflammation of organs of procreation or mutilating operations—necessary in these cases—no conception is possible. In Syphilis, conception is possible, but a woman is unable to bear living children.
In the cases of direct male sterility, the woman is perfectly healthy, and the fault lies with the man alone. ”

“ Children infected in this way at birth do not develop the true hereditary form of the disease, but get the acquired form with a chancre and secondary period, just as in later life.
Effect of Syphilis on the Child-bearing Woman.—What does syphilis mean for the woman who is in the child-bearing period? In the first place, unlike gonorrhea, which is apt to make women sterile, syphilis does not materially reduce the power to conceive in most cases. A woman with active syphilis alone may conceive with great frequency, but she cannot carry her children through to normal birth. ”

“ One may appear on the genitals one day and a few days later be gone, without the patient's ever realizing that it was there—yet in this interval a married man might infect his wife by sexual contact. The patient with a concealed syphilis often lacks even the incentive to seek examination by a doctor. It is important also to realize that when mercury has to be the only reliance, the risk of infection cannot be entirely controlled by treatment. ”

“ If we look over the world’s history, since in the latter years of the fifteenth century syphilis came down like a plague, walking with democratic tread through all walks and stations in life, laying out alike royalty or the vagrant, the curled-haired and slashed-doubleted knight, or the tonsured monk, we must conclude that syphilis has caused more families to become extinct than any ordinary plague, black death, or cholera epidemic. ”

“ Course of Hereditary Syphilis in the Infant.—The course of syphilis in the child tends to follow certain general lines. The disease, being contracted before birth, shows its most active manifestations early in life. The stillborn child is dead of its disease. The living child may be born with an eruption, or it may not develop it for several weeks or months. It is thought by some that these delayed eruptions represent infections at birth. Hereditarily syphilitic children are filled with the spirochetes, the germs of the disease. ”

“ VI. Symptoms ascribed to a 'contracted prepuce' are due to natural growth of the glans penis, when this physiological separation is very incomplete, and when, therefore, a rigid constricting envelope prevents development. No true contraction exists, except as the result of superadded inflammation; and is rarely of much importance, unless an element of contagion has been introduced.
VII. The rational treatment of congenital phimosis primarily consists in the efficient execution of the process originally intended by nature, but imperfectly carried out. ”

“ When syphilis is communicated from one individual to another by contact infection, the condition is spoken of as acquired syphilis, and the first visible sign of the disease appears at the site of inoculation, and is known as the primary lesion. Those who have thus acquired the disease may transmit it to their offspring, who are then said to suffer from inherited syphilis. ”

“ In syphilis the whole system comes under the influence of the poison.
Though these three affections are generally acquired as the result of impure sexual intercourse, there are other methods of contagion, as, for example, when the accoucheur is poisoned whilst delivering a syphilitic woman, the surgeon when operating on a syphilitic patient, the wet-nurse who is suckling a syphilitic infant, and so on. An individual may be attacked by any one or any two of the three, or by all at the same time, as the result of one and the same connexion. ”

“ Hereditary Syphilis in Older Children.—Hereditary syphilis may become a latent or concealed disease, just as acquired syphilis does. None the less, it leaves certain traces of its existence which can be recognized on examination. These are chiefly changes in the bones, which do not grow normally. The shin bones are apt to be bowed forward, not sideways, as in rickets. The skull sometimes develops a peculiar shape, the joints are apt to be large, and so on. Syphilis may affect the mental development of children in various ways. Perhaps 5 per cent of children are idiots as a result of syphilis. ”

“ Late syphilis of the skin and bones, disfiguring and horrible to look at, is less dangerous than the hidden syphilis of the blood-vessels, the nerves, and the internal organs, which, under cover of a whole skin and apparent health, maims and destroys its victims. Locomotor ataxia and softening of the brain, early apoplexy, blindness and deafness, paralysis, chronic fatal kidney and liver disease, heart failure, hardening of the blood-vessels early in life, with sudden or lingering death from any of these causes, are among the ways in which syphilis destroys innocent and guilty alike. ”

“ It is almost impossible for a syphilitic woman to nurse a child, if she is in an active stage of the disease, without the production of such infective sores on her nipples. When children are born with syphilis it means only that in the process of feeding the child through the placental tissues, a mother has infected her child quite as she might infect it by nursing afterwards, in case she acquired syphilis after the birth. Lesions corresponding to those on the nipple occur in placental tissues and can be demonstrated without much difficulty. ”

“ There is another factor to be added—that of venereal disease. The infectious germs of syphilis and gonorrhea are usually met with in the genital organs of man and woman; so that every coitus between a healthy and an infected individual may infect the former. Hence the danger of the spread of infection increases with the number of mutations in sexual intercourse. If a woman offers herself systematically to all the men who wish for her, the probability that she will be infected by one of them increases in proportion to the number of clients. ”

“ It would seem that we would have to discard the hypothesis of a congenital infection and consider that it was acquired accidentally during the lifetime of the patient. Considering the prevalence of syphilis it is rather to be wondered that more such cases of “innocent” infection do not occur in children. We may recall how many instances of juvenile gonorrhea occur. In a case as this where the symptoms calling attention to syphilis necessarily occur so long after the original infection it is practically impossible to trace the origin of the infection. ”

“ Fortunately, experience has shown that the older the case of Syphilis is, and the better it has been treated, the more chance the offspring has to escape a syphilitic heredity, and the milder will the infection be if it be inherited.
If a man in the active stage of Syphilis marries a healthy woman, whether she herself be infected or not, she will not bear living children for a certain period of time. ”

“ Kissing, caresses, and sexual relations make up the origin of an overwhelming proportion of syphilitic infection. Infections are, of course, traceable to the nursing of syphilitic infants. It is through these sources of contact that syphilis invades the family especially. Many a [Pg 117] syphilitic who realizes that he should not have sexual relations with his wife while he has the disease in active form will thoughtlessly infect her or his children by kissing. ”

“ Having given this general view of the effects of phimosis as it may affect man in the shape of his organ, which may have a serious result in his domestic relations or in becoming a father, we will proceed to the consideration of diseases and conditions that phimosis encourages and to which it renders man more liable. In the consideration of these cases it must not be forgotten that the sexual relations are much more to man or woman than is generally acknowledged. ”

“ Absence of Outward Signs in Syphilitic Mothers.—The discovery that the mother of a syphilitic child has syphilis is of great importance in teaching us how hereditary syphilis can be avoided by preventing infection of the mother. It is even more important to understand because of the difficulty of convincing the seemingly healthy mother of a syphilitic child that she herself has the disease and should be treated for it, or she will have other syphilitic children. ”

“ Nowhere else are the ravages of Syphilis more destructive and cruel; no other disease punishes the offspring for the sins of its parents so ruthlessly and wantonly; no other scourge inflicts its terrible retribution on the second generation at such a tender age as hereditary Syphilis. Hereditary Syphilis is undoubtedly the saddest and most gruesome chapter in the long black record of Syphilis. ”

“ Again a woman with syphilis may remain childless through all the years of her active infection, and finally, in her first pregnancy, give birth to a healthy child, even though she still has the disease in latent form herself. ”

“ Other observers maintain that the amoebae may pass through the walls of the intestine, through the peritoneal cavity, and so on to the liver where they give rise to typical abscesses.
Syphilis. — It has long been recognized that syphilis is a specific infective disease, but although characterized by fever, anaemia, and increased growths of tissue followed by rapid degeneration and ulceration of tissue, it is only within quite recent years that a definite parasitic organism, present in all cases of typical syphilis, has been isolated and studied. ”