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Antonio Tagarelli, MD; Giuseppe Tagarelli, PhD; Paolo Lagonia, PhD; Anna Piro, MD

Arch Dermatol. 2011;147(11):1316. doi:10.1001/archdermatol.2011.353

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

In early times, some physicians named syphilis for Greek and Roman myths as a way to explain the difficulty in overcoming the disease. Guillaume Rondelet (1507-1566) called syphilis Hydra's disease for the Greek mythological monster Hydra from Lerna, which had 9 heads, with the one in the middle being immortal. Gervais Uçay (17th century) named the numerous symptoms and clinical features of syphilis Proteus’ disease after the Greek divinity, who was able to change his appearance according to circumstance.

People believed that the outcome of syphilis was God's severe punishment for lascivious men. Juan Almenar (15th-16th century) named the disease passio turpis saturnina in remembrance of the filthy passion of Saturn, a Roman divinity, known as Kronos in Greek mythology, who killed his own sons by eating them.¹ Almenar stated, "Venereal disease is a diathesis which is . . . [Full Text of this Article]

AUTHOR INFORMATION
Author Affiliations: National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Neurological Sciences, Mangone (Cosenza), Italy.

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