In later times however the habit gradually disappeared in these countries; and is only found again at the period of greatest luxury, when the Pathics endeavoured by the removal of hair from all parts of the body, except the head, to assimilate their outward appearance to the feminine type[214]. Especially were they bound to rid the posteriors[215] of hair, as one penetrating into the anus during unnatural connexion might easily cause small cuts at the orifice, and produce chafings of the penis. For the same reason paederasts, as indeed was the case with all amateurs of Love, invariably took care to remove all hair from the genitals[216], to avoid endangering the posterior and the private parts of their mistresses. Even more than men, did _women_ seek to remove the hair from their private parts, as they do to this day in the East. This appears never to have been the case among the Jews; but in Asia and in Egypt the custom was observed by all classes of the people, and probably from those lands first spread into Greece and Italy. It seems to have been adopted very generally by Greek women;[217] but it was _especially_ hetaerae and “filles de joie”[218] who practised local as well as general depilation. A similar state of things must have existed at Rome[219], where older women resorted to the removal of hair from the genitals as a means of concealing their age[220]. In any case whether in Greece or in Italy the purpose and special object of depilation seems to have been soon lost sight of, and the practice to have been still to some extent kept up merely as a matter of fashion. Nevertheless it is a fact that the habit has continued even down to modern times in these countries, and is actually followed there to some extent on the ground of cleanliness[221].
Depilation is completed by the _polishing_ of the skin with pumice, etc., a treatment that made it very much less liable to take up dirt of all kinds. This and the _anointing_ of the body, that commonly followed it, as it did the bath (see later), guarded against the introduction of foreign matter into the tissues to an important extent, yet without interfering with transpiration, which in southern countries takes place more by the cutaneous glands than by the sweat-pores. This fact goes some way to explain how it was that the contagious plagues of Antiquity, generally of a transient character, never properly speaking acquired any wide extension, unless they were carried along with the _Genius epidemicus_ at the same time; and that even the latter, as is the case at the present day, could seldom master and reverse endemic predispositions. This last consideration merits the particular attention of the Historical Pathologist, as giving him a partial indication why Antiquity comes so far behind later times in regard to startling epidemics, at the same time teaching him to regard Asia as the home of Endemic, Europe of Epidemic Diseases. This ought to safeguard him against many over-hasty conclusions in his views of the progressive developement and evolution of disease in general. At the same time it will undoubtedly destroy not a few agreeable dreams, where he has allowed imagination to outrun reality.