The Great Pox: The French Disease in Renaissance Europe

by Jon Arrizabalaga, John Henderson, Dr. Roger French

Sweeping across Renaissance Europe, the Great Pox brought to its victims on the continent a slow, agonizing, and disfiguring death. Based on a wide range of contemporary sources, this book is the first detailed account of the new plague-known to later generations as syphilis-and reactions to it in Italy, France, and Germany, where each society struggled to meet the challenges of the frightening new epidemic.

352 pages, Hardcover

First published December 11, 1959

Reviews

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book presents a long, complicated and well told story. The Great Pox emerged in Europe at the end of the fifteenth century. Its symptoms were horribly disfiguring and painful and its course often chronic. Doctors had never seen anything like it. Was it a new disease? Could it be explained in traditional Galenic terms? This book addresses these questions [which particularly interested me] but also describes the impact of and response to the disease. I didn't try to read it straight through. I picked out chapters that especially interested me and eventually read most of the book. I look forward to referring back to it.

[Jodie Martin]

oh my god shut up