The occasion of this meeting was the discovery in 1989 near Hyères (Var, France) of a human skeleton of the third or fourth century CE presenting lesions similar to those of syphilis. The volume contains fifty papers in French and in English by eighty-six authors, grouped under seven headings: (1) Theories and Men; (2) Treponematoses Today—  Present Clues for Past Lues?; (3) Syphilis, Treponemes and Bone Diagnosis from Present to Past; (4–5) Syphilis in Europe and in the New World before 1493? (6) After 1493 in the Old World; and (7) Round Tables and Conclusions.