The origin of syphilis

https://doi.org/10.5327/DST-2177-8264-20213305 Amid the greatest world health medical challenge, enforced by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Calendar of the History of Syphilis comes to light, supported by numerous governmental, academic, and civil society organizations and led by the factotum from the study of sexually transmitted diseases in Brazil, our friend Professor Mauro Romero Leal Passos. This Calendar exposes, in an elegant and illustrated way, a detailed historiographical description of the saga of syphilis throughout its relation with humanity, presented in a ludic way, in a yearbook that daily reinforces the importance of this timeless disease: it is as old as it is current. However, given the medical-social drama laid out by COVID-19, an unsuspecting event, inopportunely and decontextualized, is the emergence of this launch amidst the on-going pandemic. The present editorial aims to highlight the importance of initiatives in the field of medical history for the full understanding of syphilis, whose teachings can transcend the pathology and clarify the entire understanding of the health-disease process, fundamental at a time in which medicine has the greatest challenge of the last century, perhaps of the entire existence.