Path. Also 8 siphylis, 9 siphilis, syphylis. [mod.L. syphilis (syphilid-), orig. the title (in full, Syphilis, sive Morbus Gallicvs) of a poem, published 1530, by Girolamo Fracastoro or Hieronymus Fracastorius (1483–1553), a physician, astronomer and poet of Verona, but used also as the name of the disease in the poem itself; the subject of the poem is the story of a shepherd Syphilus, the first sufferer from the disease, the name Syphilis being formed on the analogy of Æneis, Thebais, etc. (The poem was translated in 1686 by Nahum Tate with the title ‘Syphilis: or, a Poetical History of the French Disease.’) The term was employed systematically by Fracastoro in his treatise De Contagione, II. xi. (1546). Cf. F. syphilis, It. sifilide, Sp. sifilis, Pg., G., etc. syphilis.
The source of the name Syphilus is disputed; it has been suggested that it is a corrupt mediæval form of Sipytus, the name of a son of Niobe (so called after a mountain) in Ovid, Metam., VI. 146 ff. (See F. Boll, in Neue Jahrb. f. d. klass. Altertum, 1910, XXV. 72 ff., 168.)]
A specific disease caused by Treponema pallidum (Spirochæte pallida) and communicated by sexual connection or accidental contact (acquired form) or by infection of the child in utero (congenital form).
Three stages of the disease are distinguished, primary, secondary, and tertiary syphilis; the first characterized by chancre in the part infected, the second by affections of the skin and mucous membranes, the third involving the bones, muscles, and brain.
1718. J. F. Nicholson (title), The Modern Siphylis: or, the true method of curing every stage and symptom of the venereal disease, etc.
1801. Med. Jrnl., V. 85. Surgeons and nurses may by accident inoculate themselves with syphilis, in places appropriated for the reception of venereal patients.
1828–32. Webster, Siphilis.
1845. Budd, Dis. Liver, 252. A case of great enlargement of the liver, consequent on syphilis and the use of mercury.
1876. Bristowe, Theory & Pract. Med. (1878), 250. Syphilis has occasionally prevailed in the form of widespread and severe epidemics.
fig. 1810. Bentham, Packing (1821), 62. In Rome-bred law … fiction is a wart, which here and there deforms the face of justice: in English law, fiction is a syphilis, which … carries into every part of the system the principle of rottenness.
attrib. 1891. Science-Gossip, XXVII. 30. The General Biology of the Microbes of Rabies, Yellow Fever,… Puerperal Fever, Syphilis-tuberculosis,… &c.
1897. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., IV. 807. In the syphilis wards of the Berlin Charité Hospital.
1899. J. Hutchinson, in Archives Surg., X. 167. The subsidence of the syphilis-epidemic.
1916. Nature, 27 Jan., 609/2. Long before salvarsan was proved valuable for killing the syphilis micro-organism.
