Syphilis Is a Nasty, Nasty Disease

The number of cases of syphilis is on the rise. In Britain, there are 10 times the number of cases there were a decade ago, and France has almost 16 times the number of cases that it did just three years ago. Thankfully, we have antibiotics these days, so if you get syphilis, you most likely won’t die from it like poet Charles Baudelaire and painter Paul Gauguin might have. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have safe sex, because we just looked up “syphilis” on Wikipedia and this disease can do some nasty things to you — and these photos just show the PG version! [Note: Don’t look if you’re easily grossed out.] [International Herald Tribune]