"Perhaps more than any other disease before or since, syphilis in early modern Europe provoked the kind of widespread moral panic that AIDS revived when it struck America in the 1980s"

This quote by Peter Lewis Allen suggests that syphilis in early modern-day Europe was a particularly disastrous illness that triggered a moral panic. This panic was similar to the one that took place in the United States in the 1980s when AIDS initially appeared. The quote suggests that syphilis was a particularly contagious and devastating disease that triggered worry and panic amongst the population. It was so extreme that it was compared to the panic brought on by AIDS in the 1980s. This quote highlights the severity of syphilis in early modern-day Europe and how it had the ability to trigger a moral panic that was similar to the one triggered by AIDS in the 1980s.