On 24 April 1497 there was a meeting of the Aberdeen town council. Controlling the 'infirmity coming out of France' was one item on the agenda. This 'infirmity' was malignant syphilis, a new disease which had been sweeping northwards across Europe since 1493. The council decided (I'm translating from braid Scots) 'that all loose women be charged and ordained to desist from their vice and sin of venery and all their booths and houses closed; and they should work honestly for their bread under the pain of a brand of the iron on their cheeks and banishment from the town.' More than five hundred years later, sex-workers still trade in Aberdeen's red-light district. Syphilis became less virulent as the years went by, although this had nothing to do with the efforts of the council; it was simply that the organism was evolving. Real control of syphilis didn't come until the discovery of penicillin in the 1940s.

LRB 5 June 2003 | PDF Download