ABSTRACT
This statement made by Lempière in 1951 shows the great impact that warts have had on society over the millennia. Warts have afflicted humankind at least since the times of ancient Greece and Rome, and currently can be found in literature, art, movies and other areas of society. The Greeks and Romans were the first to use terms describing warts. The word condyloma is of Greek origin and means knuckle or knob. Myrmecia is a term derived from the Greek word for anthill. The term verruca was first used by Sennertus and originally meant a steep place or height. In Roman-Hellenistic times, genital warts were referred to using the terms ‘ficus’ and ‘thymus’. Ficus, a Latin word meaning fig, was originally used as an obscene word. This word was chosen because the Romans believed that a group of warts resembled the inside of a cut-open fig. The word thymus is also a Latin word, derived from the Greek word thymos or thymion, which was used because of the similarities in the appearance of genital warts to the tips of the thyme plant.2,3 Romans were aware that genital warts could be sexually transmitted.4 Early Hippocratic writings also refer to ‘pedunculated warts’ occurring in children. Celsus, in AD 25 in his work on medicine De Medicina, mentions three types of wart-like lesions:
One kind the Greeks call acrochordon, wherein is the development of something hard and uneven under the skin, the latter retaining its natural colour. It is thin towards its extremity, but broad at its base, and of moderate size, rarely exceeding a bean in dimensions. It is seldom solitary, but commonly occurs in clusters, and principally in children. Sometimes these little tumours terminate on a sudden; but at other times they become inflamed and are removed by suppuration. Another kind they call thymion-a little wart which projects considerably from the skin, slender at the base, broad, hard and uneven, and coloured at its summit like the blossom of the thyme, from which peculiarity it derives its name. The thymion splits up easily at the summit and is raw, and sometimes it bleeds a little; its ordinary size is that of an Egyptian bean, rarely bigger, sometimes extremely small. Sometimes it occurs singly; sometimes there are several, and both in the palms and in the soles of the feet. The worst kind are those which are developed about the organs of generation; and there they bleed more freely than elsewhere. Myrmecia is the name given to warts dwarfer and harder then the thymion. Their roots are deeper; they are more painful; they are broader at the base then at the summit; they are less disposed to bleed; and they hardly ever exceed the dimensions of a lupin in size. They are met with in the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet.’
