Return of the great pox

Pox, a disease characterized by multiple pustules, is a term that includes chickenpox, smallpox and syphilis – the great pox or grande verole. Luetic disease is another term. Syphilis is a sexually shared infection (SSIs) or transmitted disease (STD), formerly termed a venereal disease (VD). A person can be infected with more than one SSI, and SSIs generally increase the liability to transmission of viruses such as HIV, especially if there is mucosal or cutaneous ulceration. Younger people (age 16–24 years) account for half of all SSI cases, and the incidence of virtually all is increasing globally. In the UK in 2008, nearly half a million people attended clinics for SSIs.

Now recognized as infection with the bacterium Treponema pallidum and known for centuries, a syphilis epidemic broke out among the soldiers of Charles VIII of France. In 1495 he invaded Naples, and by the end of that year syphilis had spread throughout France, Switzerland and Germany, reaching Britain in 1497 and, by 1500, had reached Scandinavia, Hungary, Greece, Poland and Russia.¹ Europeans transported it to Calcutta in 1498 and, by 1520, syphilis had reached Africa, the near East, China, Japan and Oceania. Before the days of political correctness, the English and Italians called syphilis the ‘French disease’, the ‘Gallic disease’, ‘morbus Gallicus’, or the ‘French pox’; the Germans called it ‘French evil’; the Scottish called it ‘grandgore‘; the Russians called it the ‘Polish disease’; the Polish and the Persians called it the ‘Turkish disease’; the Turkish called it the ‘Christian disease’; the Tahitians called it the ‘British disease’; in India it was called the ‘Portuguese disease’, and in Japan syphilis was called the ‘Chinese pox’.^1,2