ABSTRACT
Bubonic plague changed how humans approached epidemic disease. Prior to the plague, Europeans conceived of disease, especially leprosy, as a divine punishment sent by God. The sins people believed God to be most angry with were spiritual sins. When the plague first struck, people applied the same interpretations to this new disease and, therefore thought the end of the world was coming unless people would repent their spiritual sins. However, when plague did not end the world, people began to approach the disease practically and pragmatically, paying particular attention to methods of protection and to prescriptions for healing. This approach took the control of the disease out of God’s hands and placed it, however tenuously, in man’s hands. When syphilis struck, people applied the same beliefs that prior people applied to leprosy, namely giving control of the disease to God and focusing on the spiritual sins as cause of the epidemic. Eventually, people interpreted syphilis as caused less by spiritual than carnal sins, owing primarily to the disease’s eruption on the sexual organs. By moving from a spiritual-sin interpretation to a carnal-sin interpretation, one takes the power out of God’s hand and places it more fully in man’s hands for man’s actions become the direct means of transmission. More interesting is the idea that leprosy was also brought over with syphilis and reinterpreted as a venereal disease, a movement that gives man more control over the means of transmission of that disease, too.
