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The lawyer and physician Paolo Zacchia (1584-1659) was the chief physician at the Vatican and an important advisor to the papal court. He is considered a founder of the field of forensic pathology, and the influence of his masterwork, Quaestiones medico-legales , spread throughout Europe. In this essay, we focus on one of Zacchia's consultations, first published posthumously in 1661. Emerging from a cause for beatification, the case features the intriguing medical notion of one disease curing another. Zacchia was to determine if a young man's recovery from epilepsy was miraculous or not. We will briefly review Zacchia's career, examine his argument and the sources on which he based his reasoning in this case, trace the status of the disease-versus-disease notion to the present, and demonstrate that this consultation represents a rare, if not the only example of syphilis being the curative agent - rather than the disease cured., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Queerness and Catholicism have historically been at odds with one another. The Church's condemnation of queer individuals was pervasive globally for centuries, yet one way queerness and Catholicism converge is via Saint Sebastian depictions. The purpose of this research is to examine how and why Sebastian, a Catholic saint, has come to serve as an icon for the queer community as well as how dress has been used in depicting shifting representations of the Saint from the 15 th to 21 st centuries. Drawing upon the historic method, we critically analyze the meanings present in imagery of Saint Sebastian. Through our study of portrayals of the Saint, several key themes have emerged. Several of these contemporary artworks incorporated written language that reifies sainthood and associated suffering. Furthermore, many artworks' overall composition surrounding Saint Sebastian reinforced sainthood through contextual visual elements. Ambivalence in depictions of Saint Sebastian's fleshy body was apparent, with an emphasis on depicting Sebastian within the context of his executions. A gap in time periods and differing artwork style s was observed, with many of our examples being either from the Renaissance or post 1960s. Finally, many of the contemporary artworks surveyed included overt signifiers of queerness, with minimal references to subtle queerness.