Possibly few diseases have caused so much misery and suffering as leprosy. The banishment from all friends and relatives, the confiscation of property and seclusion from the world, coupled with poverty and brutality of treatment,--all emphasize its physical horror a thousandfold. As to the leper himself, no more graphic description can be given than that printed in The Ninteenth Century, August, 1884: "But leprosy! Were I to describe it no one would follow me. More cruel than the clumsy torturing weapons of old, it distorts, and scars, and hacks, and maims, and destroys its victim inch by inch, feature by feature, member by member, joint by joint, sense by sense, leaving him to cumber the earth and tell the horrid tale of a living death, till there is nothing left of him. Eyes, voice, nose, toes, fingers, feet, hands, one after the other are slowly deformed and rot away, until at the end of ten, fifteen, twenty years, it may be, the wretched leper, afflicted in every sense himself, and hateful to the sight, smell, hearing, and touch of others, dies, despised and the most abject of men."Syphilis.--Heretofore the best evidence has seemed to prove that syphilis had its origin in 1494, during the siege of Naples by Charles VIII of France; but in later days many investigators, prominent among them Buret, have stated that there is distinct evidence of the existence of syphilis in prehistoric times. Buret finds evidence of traces of syphilis among the Chinese five thousand years ago, among the Egyptians at the time of the Pharaohs, among the Hebrews and Hindoos in biblic times, and among the Greeks and Romans after Christ. Some American writers claim to have found evidences of syphilitic disease in the skulls and other bones of the prehistoric Indian mounds, thus giving further evidence to the advocates of the American origin of syphilis. The Spaniards claimed that, returning from America in 1493, Columbus brought with him syphilis. Friend says: "One thing is remarkable; the Spaniards, upon their first expedition to America, brought home from thence this contagious disorder, and soon after carried another affection thither, the small-pox, of which the Indian Prince Montezuma died." The first descriptions of syphilis are given under the name of morbus gallicus, while the French in return called it morbus neapolitanus or mal d'Italie. The name of syphilis was said to have been first given to it by a physician of Verona, in a poem describing the disease.
Inspired by heroic epics Fracastor places before us the divinities of paganism, and supposes that a shepherd, whom he called Syphilus, had addressed words offensive to Apollo, and had deserted his altars. To punish him the God sent him a disease of the genitals, which the inhabitants of the country called the disease of Syphilus.
