CHAPTER XI
SXPHILIS OR THE FRENCH SICKNESS7

Now I will pass on to those contagions which attack rather
the exterior of the body, and I begin with the disease called
syphilis.  This is a new disease, long unknown on our continent,
but it has appeared in our time among other marvellous phe—
nomena, and has invaded almost all Europe and no small part
of Asia and Africa.  In Italy it broke out about the time when.
the French under King Charles took possession of the king—
dom of Naples about ten years before 1500, and from them it
was called the French Sickness. 'The French retort the scandal
of the name against us by calling it the Italian Sickness, while
the Spanish call it Patursa, and the Germans sometimes call it
the Sickness of Maevius,39 sometime French Sickness. Some
have invented a new word for it and call it Pudendagra, be—
cause it begins with the pudenda, on the analogy of Mentagra,3?
which begins at the chin and was so called as a new disease
among the ancients, according to Pliny. In my poem I have
called this disease Syphilis.**

This malady, though quite new to our part of the world, is
said to be very familiar in certain countries, according to the
accounts of those who have become acquainted with the New
World through the voyages of the Spaniards. For there, they
say, this contagion is widepsread and very common, in fact it
is as much at home there as scabies is with us. When it first
appeared in our country, the following signs were observed in
this disease. In certain individuals it would arise without any
contagion having been contracted from another person; in other
cases, and these were the majority, it was contracted by con—
tagion, but not from every kind of contact, nor readily, but
only when two bodies in close contact with one another became
extremely heated. Now this happened in sexual intercourse
especially, and it was by this means that the great majority of
persons were infected. However, some cases were observed of

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