A view, which _Becket_ first sought to establish on precise grounds, appeared on the contrary too bold to other investigators, who thought to find some way of evading it. This was to the effect that Leprosy under favourable conditions had changed into Venereal Disease, and the increased rarity of the former seemed to speak for this opinion. Supporters of this last view are in especial _Sprengel_ and _Choulant_ in his Preface to Fracastori’s “Syphilis”. Whilst the particular home of the Disease was fixed in this way by some authors, _Swediaur_ and _Beckman_ thought to find it in the East Indies, and held that the “Dschossam”, a familiar Indian disease, or else the “Persian Fire” must be looked upon as the original form of the Complaint. _Schaufus_ agreed with them in part; he believed Venereal disease to have been brought by the Gypsies from India to Europe. _Dr. Wizmann_[3] made the disease arise in the IInd. Century in Dacia, which at that date was transformed into a Roman Colony and had to welcome the licentious Roman soldiery. The excesses of these colonists, in a strange climate, and seconded by a combination of conditions favourable to epidemic sickness, produced the disease, which he says is generated to this day in its genuine form in Turkey. Accordingly _Wizmann_, as also _Sprengel_ and _Choulant_, and to some extent _Gruner_, who considered the Moors to be the parents of the Venereal disease, may be regarded as taking up an intermediate position between the two extreme views, and as making a sort of transition to the opinions of those who look upon the Disease as a new one.
The special supporters of this view were, as mentioned above, the non-medical, though a considerable number of men calling themselves Physicians agreed with them, though on other grounds, differing only as to the mode in which the Disease arose. The prevailing astrological views found the original cause of the Disease in the Conjunction of the Planets, a conjunction declared beforehand by prophecy to bode disaster. With this were included as contributing to the effect Inundations, the oppressed condition of Nations, Famine and the like. The disease was called an epidemic, or what at that period was practically synonymous, a pestilential disease, a Plague, and ascribed of course to the wrath of God. There were other accounts given, that still carry some show of probability; the Disease was referred to the poisoning of wells and of wine (Caesalpinus), to the admixture of gypsum with the flour (Fallopia), or actually to indulgence in human flesh.
