Syphilis in Coimbra at the beginning of the 20th century: the importance of hospital records for the study of the disease

Abstract

Syphilis is a chronic sexually or congenitally transmitted infection, with a well-documented clinical past, having been one of the major public health problems in Europe. In Portugal, there is a lack of data regarding the number of individuals infected by syphilis, or even about the characteristics of the disease and the infected people, in past official statistics. Hence, the main purpose of this study was to appraisal some of these omissions in order to extend our knowledge of this infection in the past. The aim was to obtain data about the disease in the first years of the 20th century, as well as the demographic and the socioeconomic profile of the affected individuals. The intention was also to characterize the disease, identifying the most frequent lesions and their locations in the human body. Among the patients who were hospitalized in the Hospitals of the University of Coimbra (HUC) between 1904 and 1937, 5.9% were diagnosed with syphilis. Most of them (89.3%) with the acquired form of the disease, which affected mainly single young adults (20–39 years) independently of their sex. Congenital syphilis was detected mainly in children (0–4 years). Most hospitalizations for congenital syphilis (53.9%) occurred when the disease was in its tertiary form, which did not happen in the acquired form of the disease (29.5%). The most frequent forms of tertiary syphilis were malignant, affecting 33.4% of patients with the disease at its most advanced stage.