On the illness of Politian (Agnolo Ambrogini,1454–1494): Syphilis at its identification in Europe

Abstract

The authors investigated the life, the works and the illness of the humanist and poet Agnolo Ambrogini, better known as Politian, and the cause of his death, shedding evidence on the ambiguous meaning of the term scabies that is included in the titles of two works ascribed to Politian, namely ‘Sylva in scabiem’ and ‘De scabie’. These two works tell us the illness that will kill Politian who describes them in detail as a new illness that does appear in other important works dated between the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th. This new illness will be called ‘syphilis’. Syphilis was virulent in Europe soon after it appeared and it killed Politian within one year. He seems to have been the first famous European who was not a physician who described his own syphilis. Others include the poet Niccolò Campani (1478–1523), the writer and humanist Ulrich Von Hutten (1488–1523), the sculptor and writer Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571) and Joseph Grunpeck (1473–1532), and secretary to Emperor Maximilian I (1459–1519). The origins of this serious condition have been ascribed to the crew who accompanied Christopher Columbus (1451–1506).