TY  - MGZN
T1  - Infectious diseases in historical perspective: French pox versus venereal syphilis
A1  - Arrizabalaga,Jon
Y1  - 2021/07/30
N2  - Medical historiography has tended to almost automatically identify the disease that entered European medical and lay writings at the end of the 15th century as morbus gallicus with the present-day condition known as “venereal syphilis.” This identifica-tion, which goes back to the invention, in 1530, of the term syphilis as a synonym for morbus gallicus by Girolamo Fracastoro, has been retained by many 19th- and 20th-century medical historians, and there are many still today who, in looking at past med-ical and lay descriptions of that condition, have systematically practiced retrospective diagnosis of syphilis. In this work, I will claim that identifying today’s “venereal syph-ilis” with the morbus gallicus of the past is problematic because these labels involve diseases related to radically different medical frameworks — namely, the Hippocratic Galenic humoral paradigm and the bacteriological one — that are incommensurable with each other. Subsequently, I claim that, because of the lack of use of the term syphilis until the 19th century, Fracastoro cannot be considered but a historiographic artifact in the history of “venereal syphilis.”
CY  - Gießen
PB  - Universitätsbibliothek
SN  - 2856008-5
AD  - Otto-Behaghel-Str. 8, 35394 Gießen
UR  - http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2021/16174
ER  -