Home StoriesPart of Inside Our Collections

Sex and syphilis

The Italians called it ‘the French disease’ and the French called it ‘the Neapolitan disease’. The Russians knew it as ‘the Polish disease’ and the Poles called it the ‘German disease’. To the people of Flanders and North Africa it was ‘the Spanish disease’, while to the Spanish it was known as ‘las bubas’. The British called it ‘the pox’, but you will know it as syphilis. Today a diagnosis of syphilis will require little more than a course of antibiotics and a few awkward phone calls, but it wasn’t always the case. As strains of sexually transmitted diseases are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, it’s worth remembering the centuries of misery that syphilis unleashed and the desperate remedies our ancestors clung to before reliable treatment was available.

Words by Dr Kate Lister

  • In pictures

About the author

Photographic black and white head and shoulders portrait of Dr Kate Lister.

Dr Kate Lister

Kate Lister is the creator of the award-winning online research project Whores of Yore, which seeks to build public engagement and disseminate research on the history of sex and sexuality through social media. She also lectures at Leeds Trinity University, and is widely published on the sex trade.