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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
syphilis
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A lumbar puncture may be required if syphilis or granulomatous infection is suspected.
▪ Congenital syphilis is arbitrarily divided into early and late stages with the dividing line at two years of age.
▪ How glad I am, she thought simply, that I have not suddenly contracted syphilis.
▪ I also wonder if she feared syphilis.
▪ Semen infected with hepatitis or syphilis can be donated, but only if a woman agrees to accept it.
▪ The famous Wassermann diagnostic blood test for syphilis has been used for forty years.
▪ Until 1942 there was no reliable cure for syphilis, too late for Karen Blixen.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Syphilis

Syphilis \Syph"i*lis\, n. [NL., fr. Syphilus, the name of a shepherd in the Latin poem of Fracastoro, ``Syphilus, sive Morbus Gallicus,'' which was published in 1530; Gr. ? hog, swine + ? dear, loving. The term was introduced into nosology by Sauvages.] (Med.) The pox, or venereal disease; a chronic, specific, infectious disease, usually communicated by sexual intercourse or by hereditary transmission, and occurring in three stages known as primary, secondary, and tertiary syphilis. See under Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
syphilis

infectious venereal disease, 1718, Modern Latin, originally from the title of a poem, "Syphilis, sive Morbus Gallicus" "Syphilis, or the French Disease," published 1530, by Veronese doctor Girolamo Fracastoro (1483-1553), which tells the tale of the shepherd Syphilus, supposed to be the first sufferer from the disease. Fracastoro first used the word as a generic term for the disease in his 1546 treatise "De Contagione." Why he chose the name is unknown; it may be intended as Latin for "Pig-lover," though there was also a Sipylus, a son of Niobe, in Ovid.

Wiktionary
syphilis

n. (context disease English) A disease spread via sexual activity, caused by the bacterium ''Treponema pallidum''.

WordNet
syphilis

n. a common venereal disease caused by the Treponema pallidum spirochete; symptoms change through progressive stages; can be congenital (transmitted through the placenta) [syn: syph, pox]

Wikipedia
Syphilis

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The signs and symptoms of syphilis vary depending in which of the four stages it presents (primary, secondary, latent, and tertiary). The primary stage classically presents with a single chancre (a firm, painless, non-itchy skin ulceration) but there may be multiple sores. In secondary syphilis a diffuse rash which frequently involves the palms of the hands and soles of the feet occurs. There may also be sores in the mouth or vagina. In latent syphilis there are little to no symptoms which can last for years. In tertiary syphilis there are gummas (soft non-cancerous growths), neurological, or heart symptoms. Syphilis has been known as " the great imitator" as it may cause symptoms similar to many other diseases.

Syphilis is most commonly spread through sexual activity. It may also be transmitted from mother to baby during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis. Other human diseases caused by related Treponema pallidum include yaws (subspecies pertenue), pinta (subspecies carateum), and bejel (subspecies endemicum). Diagnosis is usually made by using blood tests; the bacteria can also be detected using dark field microscopy. The Center for Disease Control recommends all pregnant women be tested.

The risk of syphilis can be decreased by latex condom use or not having sex. Syphilis can be effectively treated with antibiotics. The preferred antibiotic for most cases is benzathine penicillin G injected into a muscle. In those who have a severe penicillin allergy, doxycycline or tetracycline may be used. In those with neurosyphilis intravenous penicillin G potassium or ceftriaxone is recommended. During treatment people may develop fever, headache, and muscle pains, a reaction known as Jarisch-Herxheimer.

In 2013 syphilis infected about 315,000 people. During 2010 it caused about 113,000 deaths down from 202,000 in 1990. After decreasing dramatically with the availability of penicillin in the 1940s, rates of infection have increased since the turn of the millennium in many countries, often in combination with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This is believed to be partly due to increased promiscuity, prostitution, decreasing use of condoms, and unsafe sexual practices among men who have sex with men. In 2015, Cuba became the first country in the world to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of syphilis.

Usage examples of "syphilis".

It occurred to him belatedly that syphilis was perhaps not a topic suitable to discuss with a lady.

Louisiana ranked near the top in the nation in rates of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia, the governor instituted an abstinence program.

The name of syphilis was said to have been first given to it by a physician of Verona, in a poem describing the disease.

With those whose systems are enfeebled by want, intemperance, exposures or disease, as scrofula or syphilis, the first symptoms usually observed will be a frequent desire to urinate, occasional attacks of diarrhea, flatulency, dropsical swelling of the face, especially under the eyes, and afterwards of the extremities, paleness and increasing debility.

Thus, in her first three issues, the Oracular Vulva delivered disquisitions on the erotic art of the Japanese painter Hiroshi Yamamoto, the epidemiology of syphilis, and the sex life of St.

At the time, guaiac, a bush that grows in the West Indies, was commonly used to treat syphilis.

Your new lover has syphilis, gonorrhoea, and four other venereal diseases for which the queen has no English names.

Every woman or girl who has so far come to Joy Hall from Chatterford has had, at one stage or another, the same strain of syphilis that maddened Peavis Green.

Somehow he has avoided the virulent syphilis that once infected most of the Chatterford staff.

We had lobar pneumonia, meningococcal meningitis, streptococcal infections, diphtheria, endocarditis, enteric fevers, various septicemias, syphilis, and, always, everywhere, tuberculosis.

The fierce and sentimental music and the ignorant colors, the prettiness and the disease under the fake-gold light, the tuberculosis and syphilis, the fires showing through the branches like illuminated brains, the glamorous nomas of eye and mouth, the childishness and all the valueless trash.

These wards were filled with derelicts: old women with dementia, impecunious veterans down on their luck, noseless men with tertiary syphilis and the like.

Marsden reports a case in which, following secondary papular syphilis and profuse spontaneous ptyalism, there was vicarious secretion of the urinary constituents from the skin.

She was never the victim of rachitis or like disease, but died of syphilis in the Colonial Hospital.

This theory has it that the prince, never known as the brightest light or most upstanding exemplar of the Hanover line, suffered from effects of syphilis on the brain as a result of his debauching and that he used to slum in Whitechapel and pick up lowly women.