science and medicine in early modern venice 727
by seamen on columbus’s returning voyage. Spanish soldiers carried
the sickness to naples, where troops in charles Viii’s invading army
were infected and took the illness back to France—hence the disease’s
16th-century name, Mal Francese, or French disease. although today
syphilis is a treatable malady, in the renaissance it was an incurable
scourge. observers in Venice noted the threat of syphilis as early as 1499,
when the diarist Marin Sanudo reported that a Venetian galley at corfu
was unable to set sail because the crew was infected with the French
disease.71 early on, physicians recognized that Mal Francese was a venereal
disease, and hence the control of syphilis was inextricably bound up with
the control of prostitution.72
By 1522, the number of cases reported in Venice had grown to the point
that the Public Health office authorized the creation of the Spedale degli
incurabili [Hospital for incurables], which was founded by two noble-
women, Maria Malipiera Malipiero and Marina Grimani.73 The incurabili
hospital, like similar hospitals founded throughout italy, was specifically
intended as a hospital for the treatment of victims of the French dis-
ease. although pious charity was certainly an important motivation for
the establishment of the incurabili hospital, the fear and disgust engen-
dered by the appearance of syphilis victims on the streets of Venice also
contributed. The Health office’s decree founding the hospital aimed at
addressing the problems created by “people who are sick and with the
sores of Mal Francese and other illnesses.”74 Mal Francese was the main
but not the only concern of the government. indigence was also seen as
a social problem, and the sick poor were deemed a public nuisance. The
Sanità noted:
Some of these persons in their bodily weakness languish in the streets
and the doorways of churches and public places both at San Marco and
the rialto to beg for a living; and some, being inured to their profession of
begging, have no wish to seek a cure and loiter in these same places, giving71 laura J. McGough, “demons, nature, or God? Witchcraft accusations and the French
disease in early Modern Venice,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 80 (2006), p. 226.
72 laura J. McGough, Sexuality and Syphilis in Early Modern Venice: The Disease That
Came to Stay (Basingstoke, 2011).
73 Jon arrizabalaga, John Henderson, and roger French, The Great Pox: The French
Disease in Renaissance Europe (new Haven, 1997), p. 165. on the history of hospitals in
early modern Venice, see Bernard aikema and dulcia Meiejers, eds., Nel Regno dei poveri.
Arte e storia dei grandi ospedali veneziani in età moderna 1474–1797 (Venice, 1989). on the
Incurabili, see pp. 131–48.
74 Quoted in arrizabalaga et al., Great Pox, p. 166.