ABSTRACT
Epidemics of the diseases considered in this chapter
have the common characteristic that they are severe
in the degree of disruption and human misery which
they cause. Wars and famines are the co-factors
which amplify the effects of normally mild,
occasional and now treatable conditions, causing
them to develop into major epidemics. Figure 4.1
shows the classic Dürer etching of a syphilis patient.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, syphilis was
to spread widely in Europe through soldiers returning
from wars in central Italy. Similarly, upheaval in the
