on the text, he must have been diffident at least of the accuracy of its application.  In that note, he makes mention of a dissertation published in 1765, by Dr Antonio Sanchez Ribeiro, in which it is endeavoured to be proved that the venereal disease took its rise in Europe, and was brought on by an epidemical and malignant disorder.  Though calling in question some of the facts on which this opinion is built, the Principal allows that it “is supported with such plausible arguments, as render it (what? deserving of considerable regard, or very probable?  No such thing—­as render it) a subject of enquiry well deserving the attention of learned physicians!” Mr Bryan Edwards is more moderate in his judgment of the matter, and seemingly more industrious in ascertaining the evidence of it.  In his opinion, an attentive enquirer will hesitate to subscribe to the conclusion that this infection was the product of the West Indies.  He refers to the work of Sanchez above mentioned, and to several other works, for reasons to substantiate the other view; and he terminates his note with the following paragraph, which by most readers will be considered of superlative authority as to one important part of the case:  In Stowe’s Survey of London, vol. ii. p. 7, is preserved a copy of the rules or regulations established by parliament in the eighth year of Henry the Second, for the government of the licensed stews in Southwark, among which I find the following:  “No stewholder to keep any woman that hath the perilous infirmity of burning.”  This was 330 years before the voyage of Columbus.  If this “perilous infirmity of burning” be the disease now denominated the Lues Venerea, the question is solved as to the concern of America in its production.  And all that Oviedo, Guicciardin, Charlevoix, and others say, as to its first appearance in Europe, when the king of Spain sent an army to the assistance of Ferdinand the Second of Naples, must be reckoned as applicable only to its greater frequency, or more common occurrence, than had before been known.  But, indeed, the description given of the disease which then prevailed so alarmingly, is with some difficulty reconcileable to what is now ascertained of the venereal infection.  Guicciardin himself seems to hint at a diversity in its form and mode of reception, betwixt the period he assigns for its appearance, and “after the course of many years.”  “For then,” says he, (the quotation is made from Fenton’s curious translation, London, 1599) “the disease began to be less malitious, changing itself into diverse kindes of infirmity, differing from the first calamity, whereof truly the regions and people of our times might justly complain, if it happened to them without their proper disorder (that is, without their own fault,) seeing it is well approved by all those that have diligently studied and observed the properties of that evil, that either never or very rarely it happeneth to any otherwayes, than by contagious whoredome