Thanks Bruce.

To save people from wasting time searching for it, here's the appropriate bit

It was poisoning from the mercury salts used to treat syphilis that killed him. See "The Buck's Elegy", c 1800?, in Holloway and Black's 'Later English Broadside Ballads', I, #17. The song is widely noted to have come from "The Unfortune Rake", but there are no known extant copies as old as that of "The Buck's Elegy".

The tune of "The Unfortunate Rake" is reprinted from an Irish collection published by Smollet Holden, c 1805, as #4584 in 'Sources of Irish Traditional Music", 1998. According to Phillips Barry in BFSSNE the most common tune is derived from the 2nd half of the old Irish tune.

"The Buck's Elegy" version has no analog to the verses quoted above. Note that venereal disease is always taken to be the woman's fault. Do they buy it as seeds and grow it from scratch?

In answer to your question, the answer is - of course - that men (almost) invariably caught it from a woman ... it's a case of "shoot the messenger". In the case of the song, he's also usually complaining that she should have told him about it sooner, then he would have been able to get a cure.

:-)