228 ACTA DERMATOVENEROLOGICA CROATICA Acta Dermatovenerol Croat 2011;19(4):228-236 HISTORY OF MEDICINE A Brief History of Syphilis by Its Synonyms Antonio Tagarelli, Giuseppe Tagarelli, Paolo Lagonia, Anna Piro National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Neurological Science, Mangone (Cosenza), Italy Corresponding author: Antonio Tagarelli, MD National Research Council of Italy Institute of Neurological Sciences Contrade Burga 87050 Mangone (Cosenza), Italy a.tagarelli@isn.cnr.it Received: December 8, 2010 Accepted: November 2, 2011 SUMMARY The history of a disease can be described or revisited by difer- ent main roads analyzing archival documents or rich bibliography, or study- ing biographies of diferent renowned men. Other diferent main roads can be apparently less important, too. These can be described as studying diferent therapies, renowned afected men or synonyms for diseases. We choose this latter main road studying the syphilis disease by the historical course of its numerous diferent synonyms during ive centuries. KEY WORDS: syphilis disease, synonyms, history of syphilis, venereal dis- ease, history of medicine, skin diseases INTRODUCTION In 1777, William Cullen (1710-1790) used the term “syphilis” to identify the major venereal disease, dif- ferentiating it from the minor venereal disease, gon- orrhea (1). In 1821, an etymological dictionary states: “by this term [syphilis] some physicians indicated the ilthy and baneful gallic morbus” (2); similarly, in 1841, a French-Italian dictionary states: “… quelques au- teurs se servent de ce mot pour exprimer la vérole” (3). Finally, a detailed work (4) from 1948 demonstrates the conlicting conclusions drawn by many authors about the etymological meaning of the term “syphi- lis”: “amorous embrace”; “impure love”; “lover of the female sex”; “membrum virile”; “pig membrum”; “dis- ease that makes one disabled”; “disease that impairs birth”. As the term “syphilis” is present in the language of experts, and recently in popular language, in the present work we call syphilis “the disease”, omitting the following expressions: “unknown illness” (5), “ill- ness of unknown nature” (6), “new disease” (7), “new illness” (8). Diagnoses of the skin symptoms of dif- ferent diseases are well described by Girolamo Mer- curiali (1530-1606) (recognized as Mercuriale) in his work “De morbis cutaneis” (Venice, 1585), which was the irst treatise describing skin diseases. In the present work, we assemble the diferent names given to the types of skin lesions and skin dis- ease in order to better evaluate all the synonyms. SYNONYMS IN MEDICAL AND OTHER LITERATURE The disease spread across Europe at the begin- ning of the Modern Era (the accepted date is the year 1492). Its wide spread in Germany inspired Maximilian I of Hapsburg (1459-1519) to promulgate an edict on 7 August 1495 in the city of Worms to require people to protect themselves from the “pösen Plattern” (9) (“bad pox” in medieval German); within the year, this name had been replaced by “bösen Blättern” (“bad pox” in modern German) (10). This mirrored a similar edict promulgated in Worms earlier that same year, on 25 May 1495, in which the disease was named “malat-