Syphilis is one of the most common and significant diseases among sexually transmitted infections. Despite prolonged study of the disease, a number of questions concerning its pathogenesis, particular features of its clinical progression and also its origin remain the subject of discussion to the present day. Until now, there has been no single point of view on the cause of the syphilis epidemic in Europe at the turn of the 15th to 16th centuries, and European and American theories for the origin of syphilis are backed by an approximately equal number of scientists