1. Definition, names, and origin
Syphilis is a chronic illness that is usually transmitted by sexual intercourse. The modern name goes back to the Italian physician and poet Girolamo Fracastoro and his didactic poem Syphilidis sive morbi Gallici libri tres (“Three Books on Syphilis or the French Disease”; printed in Verona 1530 and Rome 1531, but probably written in 1521). In…