The article presents views on mental disorders in patients with syphilis in the historical aspect. In chronological order, the article informs a reader about the most significant events and personalities in the study of the relationship between syphilis and progressive paralysis, including the work of psychiatrists who made significant contribution to the development of psychiatry in the 19th and 20th centuries. (J. Esquirol, A. Bale, W. Griesinger, A. Alzheimer, E. Kraepelin, R. von Krafft-Ebing, et al.) which confirms the special importance of the identification of progressive paralysis as a separate disease in the development of psychiatry as a science. The evolution of views on the etiology and pathogenesis of syphilis and progressive paralysis and the direct connection with the occurrence of mental disorders in patients with syphilis are reviewed. Modern data on the state of the studied problem are presented along with assessment of possible reasons for recent increase in the incidence of neurosyphilis (including the effect of comorbid HIV infection) and, as a result, the return to patients with progressive paralysis to psychiatric hospitals. Special attention is paid not only to mental disorders due to brain damage caused by treponema pallidum (neurosyphilis), but also to the importance of psychological mechanisms in the development of mental disorders in patients with syphilis, reactive states on the fact of infection with a stigmatizing disease (nosogenic reactions).