Did the syphilis epidemic start the 16th and 17th century wig craze?
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Thomas Nashe's 1592 work Pierce Penilesse, His Supplication to the Divell implies a use of wigs to hide the indications of venereal disease:
"Men and women that have gone under the South pole, must lay off their furde night-caps in spight of their teeth, and become yeomen of the vineger bottle: a close periwig hides al the sinnes of an olde who*e-master, but Cucullus non facit Monachum--'tis not their newe bonnets will keepe them from the old boan-ach."
"Gone under the South Pole" is, as you might guess, a euphemism for fornication. "Lay off their furde (furred) night-caps" seems to refer to loss of hair, and the "vinegar bottle" was a supposed cure for syphilis. (See also p. 19 here.) "A close periwig hides all the sins of an old who*e-master" seems to be a relatively straightforward reference to wearing a wig to hide the symptoms of the disease.
"Cucullus non facit Monachum": the hood does not make the monk. In other words, that wig might hide your symptoms but it doesn't change anything.
In the 1604 play The Wit of a Woman, the character Bizardo says:
"...A periwig, a pox on it: and yet I curse to late: for, but for the poxe, it had never been used, for I have heard that in olde time, balde men were had in great reverence..."
Note here the allusion to wigs coming into use specifically because of the disease. "Pox" in this context is the "French Pox," or syphilis.
(This last reference found via the very interesting paper "Strange Things Out of Hair: Baldness and Masculinity in Early Modern England," by Anu Korhonen.)
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