Infectious Diseases in Historical Perspective

French Pox Versus Venereal Syphilis

Medical historiography has tended to almost automatically identify the disease that entered European medical and lay writings at the end of the 15th century as morbus gallicus with the present-day condition known as “venereal syphilis.” This identification, which goes back to the invention, in 1530, of the term syphilis as a synonym for morbus gallicus by Girolamo Fracastoro (c. 1478–1553), has been retained by many 19th- and 20th-century medical historians, and there […]