As with so many other diseases, the origin of syphilis is not consensual: while some authors argue that it was brought from the New World by the crew of Columbus, others, basing their interpretation on archeology, support a pre-Columbian origin.
The first designations of syphilis present it as a curse and an evil thing originating beyond borders: syphilis was for the French the mal napolitan (Neapolitan evil), while the Italians called it morbus gallicus, that is, “disease of the French”.
In the Todos os Santos Royal Hospital, commissioned by D. João II and inaugurated by his cousin and brother-in-law, D. Manuel I, the "house of boubas" was created for the isolated treatment of patients infected with syphilis. "Boubas" was the name given to a wide variety of syphilitic lesions such as adenomegalies, abscesses, ulcers, warts and papules.
The Spanish Ruy Diaz D'Ysla, who worked for ten years at the Hospital, published in 1539 one of the first detailed descriptions of the disease, dedicated to King D. João III, entitled Tractado contra el mal Serpentino: que vulgarmente em España es llamado bubas…
But it was the Italian Girolamo Fracastoro who gave the modern name to the new disease when in 1530 he published the poem Syphilis, sive morbus gallicus.
In the library there are two French translations of Fracastoro's work: Syphilis ou le mal vénérien: poeme latin de Jerôme Fracastor, avec la traduction en françois, et des notes. - Paris: Chez Jacques-François Quillau, 1753 (FMUL DIC Library: RES. 1151); Syphilis ou le mal vénérien: poëme latin/de Jérome Fracastor, avec la traduction en françois, et des notes. - Paris: Chez le Cen. Lucet, 1796 (FMUL DIC Library: RES. 1674).
The pathologies are usually referred to from their Greek roots, and also from the Latin, indicating the type of affliction. In the case of Syphilis, the origin is mythological and is beautifully described in Ovid's Metamorphoses, a masterpiece of Western literature, with tremendous influence on the plastic arts, music and literature: Apollo punished shepherd Syphilus with the disease, to punish him for insulting him.
It should be noted that only with the advent of microbiology in the late nineteenth century that the perspectives for treatment of the disease truly opened.
André Silva
Library and Information Area
