In 1495, an epidemic of a new terrible disease broke out among the soldiers of Charles VIII of France when he invaded Naples in the first of the Italian Wars.
The consequences of this disease on the people of Europe were devastating. This disease was syphilis or as was called the “great pox”.
Syphilis didn’t have the same horrendous mortality rate as the plague; however, its symptoms are repulsive and very painful.
The appearance of genital sores followed by the appearance of foul abscesses and ulcers all over the body freaked people out then. The pain was also severe.
And because it is a sexually transmitted disease, it was shamed and stigmatized from the very beginning of the emergence of the disease.