Benoit Pouget
La Syphilis, Itinéraires croisés en Méditerranée et au-delà, XVIe-XXIe siècles.
Collective work co-edited with Yann Ardagna (ADES) published by Presses Universitaires d'AMU.
Author(s): Yann Ardagna, Benoît Pouget, dir.Publication date: 2021 quarter 2Summary:
Perhaps more than any other contagious disease, syphilis embodied the tensions of a globalising world between the 16th and 19th centuries. If we follow Alain Corbin's description of "the composite image of the venereal peril, an unprecedented spectre, whose original features [...] would not fade until the middle years of the twentieth century", then our study of a slow-moving epidemic is compelling. Peter Baldwin captures the dynamic between "prostitution and promiscuity" and highlights the "attempts at regulation" superimposed on the dynamics of circulation. Under the aegis of these two references, this symposium brought together historians, anthropologists and doctors, focusing our attention on the 'shock' of the encounter between treponema pale and societies on a municipal scale, and in particular in port cities. Joint analyses of historical and biological archives show the need for models of the spread and expression of syphilis on the scale of a town, a merchant port or a military port. Going well beyond the question of origins, the contributions offer extensive readings of the relationship between syphilis and societies in the Mediterranean and beyond. This symposium is therefore unique in that it brings together a wide range of disciplines (medicine, epidemiology and public health, history, geography, funerary and social anthropology, sociology) to focus on the same research subject and study on the same scale.
