At the beginning of the 1980s, a new epidemic came over the world with AIDS. Epidemics were never extinct, they spread fear and terror - in every age. The increase in scientific knowledge has not changed this. New reports are heard almost daily: deadly epidemics with Ebola viruses, new pathogens cause mad cow disease, antibiotics fail against multi-resistant bacteria. Worse still: the old "great epidemics" are returning. The cause: poverty, misery, hunger and wars, collapse of health systems in the East, spread through mass tourism, open borders and globalisation. The three-part television series "The Diseases" describes three of the classic "scourges of humanity": tuberculosis, cholera and syphilis. The films show spread, causes and historical consequences: effects of the respective disease on culture and society, dealing with the infected, scientific search for pathogens and treatment options.
Health authorities in major European cities have been registering an increase in sexually transmitted diseases - including syphilis - for years. Every year, 12 million people worldwide fall ill with this "sexually transmitted disease", which until a few years ago had completely disappeared from the statistics. They brought the disease with them from the Third World or from Eastern Europe, where it is still often spread today through unprotected traffic.
The film describes the path of the disease, which was introduced from the New World a good 500 years ago. An epidemic that is not regarded as fate, but as punishment for sinful behaviour. It applied - and often still applies today - to venereal diseases: health is proof of virtue, disease an indication of depravity.
Poets, thinkers and musicians were particularly frequently infected with syphilis. According to legend, the pathogens cause ingenuity. Then, however, madness quickly threatens: Nietzsche's medical history is exemplary for the course of this fatal disease, which could not be cured until the development of penicillin. Its successor and ally is called "AIDS".