2455: syphilis Aug 31, 2021

'Syphilis', since its arrival to Europe from the Americas took on a number of euphemisms including 'purple flower', 'great imitator', 'black lion', and so on. It might sound therefore that 'syphilis' is the scientific name is more straightforward, but this too is a sort of euphemism, coming from the name of a character in Girolamo Fracastoro's poem about a boy who insults a Greek deity and is cursed with a harsh disease. The poem actually used the spelling 'Syphilus' but this was changed in common spelling for the disease.