A Horrible New Disease Sweeps Early Modern Europe.

Sins of the Flesh: Responding to Sexual Disease in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Kevin Siena. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria University in the University of Toronto, 2005, 294 pages. Paper, $28.00.

Details about the early history of syphilis are widely speculative. The first records of syphilis date to the 1490s during the siege of Naples by Charles VIII, king of France. The effects of syphilis caused the French to abandon their siege and, as a result, for most of its early history syphilis was known as a French disease, something the French strove to change. Little of the recorded history of syphilis pays attention to what people thought about the disease, and it is this topic which this book explores in considerable detail.

Sins of the Flesh examines the appearance of a vast number of medical treatises having to do with syphilis and why, after some debate, it came to be regarded as a venereal disease (in part because it was usually in the sex organs that the disease was first noticed). Even after syphilis was identified, it was often confused with gonorrhea and various genito-urinary or skin conditions since physicians of the time diagnosed the disease based on symptoms; the spirochete causing it was not isolated until late in the nineteenth century. For several centuries, syphilis appeared to be everywhere, and there seemed to be no lasting cure.

This book is a collection of essays by different scholars reporting various attempts to deal with syphilis, including the professional medical response, the nonprofessional "healing" response, and a variety of others. It seemed every social group, from astrologers to theologians to outfight quacks, promoted their own forms of treatment. Moralists condemned the luxury and lechery associated with syphilis, and many blamed the disease on sodomy. The European response was universal, although this book deals most with the responses in Italy and England.

The book does not pay much attention to questions about the origins of syphilis, a long-debated topic. In an attempt to escape the onus of the "French disease," the French pushed the New World origins of the disease. This hypothesis is not as widely-accepted now as it once was, and scholars tend to look to a combination of causes and events. Instead of debating this issue, the contributors in Sins of the Flesh are interested in the response to the disease.

In a sense the effect of the disease was similar to the early onset of AIDS in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s, but people in previous centuries lacked the tools of modern medicine which allow disease to be eventually diagnosed and treated. In fact, despite the efforts of Paul Ehrlich and his Magic Bullet, it was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that syphilis could be cured, although some treatments developed at the beginning of the century proved helpful. Even in the 1940s and 1950s, many if not most of the long-term patients in the Veteran's Administration (VA) Hospitals with which I had some connection were veterans of World War I suffering from the third phase of syphilis. Since syphilis was still regarded with horror well into the twentieth century, it is not difficult to imagine how the people in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries regarded it.

Although the book contains a lot of fascinating data, it is difficult reading and I cannot recommend Sins of the Flesh for the ordinary reader. These are scholarly monographs, and even though I am well-acquainted with the historical period, I had to look up individuals and references I had either forgotten or did not know about. The value of the book is that it has rescued many of these obscure references and discussions and made them available to interested readers.

Sins of the Flesh is an important book for scholars. Perhaps someone can now take the material in it and fashion a popular history of the disease that would differ from most past interpretations. As it is, the current book is for specialists and not a general audience, although some might find it interesting to dip in and read a little about how earlier Western cultures coped with their most problematic sexually transmitted infection.

Reviewed by Vern L. Bullough, SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus, 3304 Sierra Dr., Westlake Village, CA, 91362-3542; e-mail: [e-mail].