Syphilis Epidemic in Naples

1495

During Charles VIII's occupation of Naples, French soldiers and Italian camp followers developed a new and horrifying pox. The disease spread across Europe within two years, blamed on every nationality in turn. It may have come from the Americas with Columbus's returning sailors. Sex and conquest had exchanged plagues. The disease's rapid mutation from fatal to chronic suggests a pathogen adapting swiftly to new hosts, a pattern epidemiologists still study.