syphilomanian.

1815 J. Cross Sketches Med. Schools Paris 164 Syphilomania is a malady that might long ere this have been noticed by Nosologists; it has committed its ravages in England, and is at present raging much in France.

1820 Edinb. Med. & Surg. Jrnl. 16 56 Had this man a pox? One infected with syphilomania would have said he had; while another more cautious in his diagnosis, or less fearful of venereal complaints, would have previously inquired, whether it might not simply be the effects of abrasion of the cuticle.

1872 Boston Med. & Surg. Jrnl. 21 Nov. 363/2 (heading) Syphilomania among the Doctors.

1912 Amer. Practitioner & News 46 387 We must guard against a tendency toward a so-called diagnostic syphilomania; must not believe that everybody has or has had syphilis and needs salvarsan, until absolute existence of the disease is proven.

1838 E. G. Davis tr. A. Muehry Observ. Compar. State Med. 55 Among them are persons who cannot be made to believe that they are not affected with syphilis; they labour under syphilomania.

1864 F. J. Bumstead Pathol. & Treatm. Venereal Dis. (rev. ed.) iii. vi. 475 A sad case in which syphilomania led a patient..to commit suicide several months after all syphilitic manifestations had disappeared.

1917 M. Morris Nation's Health 71 There are people who, having been exposed to contagion,..fear quite groundlessly that they have contracted syphilis. There are others who, having contracted it and been effectually treated, fear a relapse. In some cases these fears become an obsession, and a state of mind is induced which is known as syphilomania.

1990 J. Braddock & B. Pike tr. C. Quétel Hist. Syphilis vi. 147 As early as the beginning of the nineteenth century doctors were deploring the ‘syphilomania’ of certain patients.