Sexually Transmitted Diseases: Dermatology Manuals to Combat Debauchery?

Every week in "Les 400 Culs" , Agnès Giard, an anthropologist attached to the University of Paris Nanterre and a specialist in Japan, examines contemporary sexual discourses and practices with a skeptical and detached analysis, informed by the latest research in the human and social sciences.

At the age of 15, Arthur Schnitzler was traumatized by his father, who forced his nose into his work in Pathology of Skin Diseases . Dating from 1860, this medical work is filled with gruesome images of men covered in pustules and ulcers, their faces eaten away by chancres. "It was intended to warn against a scourge with no cure," explains Sophie Delpeux. An art history researcher and lecturer at the Sorbonne, she recounts the terror of syphilis in the 19th century in Soigner l'image (PUF), which was just published on April 30.

Having appeared in our country four centuries earlier, syphilis was probably brought back from the New World by sailors and armies. When it spread virulently in Europe, it was mainly through prostitutes. Strongly associated with "depravity",