★A popular history of syphilis.
★An interesting and engaging account of the unmentionable disease syphilis from different literary, artistic, medical, and ethical perspectives.

The history of syphilis is full of myths, romanticism, and euphemisms. The disease is sexually transmitted and could lead to lifelong physical and psychological suffering, it is, however, more than just a disease; burdened with shame, guilt, sensationalism, and grotesquerie the disease has been difficult to discuss in neutral terms.
The history has a clear beginning with Columbus’ travels to the New World, ending with the breakthrough of penicillin. Still, the disease did not die, it has found new life in popular culture of the 21st century.In The Kingdom of Contagion Agneta Rahikainen begins with the history of her own family and then plunges down into the cultural historical, medicinal, ethical, sexual political, and artistic ways of processing the disease. This raises questions about morality, eugenics, purity, social problems, prostitution, and the role of women as wives and mothers. It is not surprising that Franz Schubert, Charles Baudelaire and Karin Blixen occurs in the book, Victoria Benedictsson and Richard Wagner also find their place in the book.
If there is anything Rahikainen manages to show in her exposé, it is that syphilis is more present in the past than commonly believed, although the inability – or unwillingness – to put the evil into words is a common theme of most stories.

Agneta Rahikainen has a doctorate in literary studies and is the author of several literary biographies – about Johan Ludvig and Fredrika Runeberg, about Henry Parland, and the latest about Edith Södergran. She has been awarded several literary awards for her works, in Sweden as well as in Finland. She is working as head of marketing at the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland.

A family secret
The ideology of syphilis
To lose ones nose
The French desease
The female Fleur du Mal
The deseased prostitute
Women and sexual education
around 1900
Syphilis and the morality debate
Inheriting syphilis
Getting married to syphilis
The doctors
Doctor Faustus and his clients
Parsiphal
Being cared for at health resorts and in China
Everything is just syphilis
References