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Sexually transmitted diseases:  Epidemic cycling and immunity

Bryan Grenfell1 & Ottar Bjørnstad1

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Are syphilis epidemics caused by external factors such as human sexual behaviour, or are factors intrinsic to the pathogen more important? Comparing the dynamics of syphilis and gonorrhoea provides some clues.

The great Renaissance physician and scholar Girolamo Fracastoro achieved lasting fame for his early observations on the contagion theory of the transmisssion of infectious disease1. In 1530, he also coined the name for syphilis — which was then spreading rapidly through Europe — in an extended allegory written in Latin hexameter (epidemiologists were more culturally rounded in those days).

  1. Bryan Grenfell is in the Department of Biology, 208 Mueller Laboratory, and Ottar Bjørnstad is in the Departments of Entomology and Biology, 501 ASI Building, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA.
    e-mail: Email: grenfell@psu.edu

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