The Battle and the Bulge

Did the codpiece come into vogue because a bunch of Italian counts were trying to conceal their fights against syphillis? An Australian doctor makes the case:

The treatment of the disease was for the most part empirical with multiple agents applied locally, which along with the bulky dressings would give large frontal bulges, impossible to hide. The problem would present the tailors with a challenge that appears to have been met by them featuring the mass with the codpiece, while also...