Warts are non-cancerous viral growths usually occurring on the hands and feet but which can also affect other locations, such as the genitals or face.

[3] Factors that increase the risk include the use of public showers and pools, working with meat, eczema, and a weak immune system.

This is prevented through careful handling of needles or sharp objects that could infect the individual through physical trauma of the skin, plus the practice of safe sex using barrier methods such as condoms.

[1] Prior to widespread adoption of the HPV vaccine, the estimated rate of genital warts in sexually active women was 12%.

Many HPV types can produce a benign growth, often called a "wart" or "papilloma", in the area they infect.

Tom Sawyer proposes "spunk-water" (or "stump-water", the water collecting in the hollow of a tree stump) as a remedy for warts on the hand.

Another remedy involved splitting a bean, drawing blood from the wart and putting it on one of the halves, and burying that half at a crossroads at midnight.

[54] Another remedy similar to Twain's is reported from Northern Ireland, where water from a specific well on Rathlin Island is credited with the power to cure warts.

[55] Surviving ancient medical texts show that warts were a documented disease since at least the time of Hippocrates, who lived c. 460 – c. 370 BC.

In the book De Medecia by the Roman physician Aulus Cornelius Celsus, who lived c. 25 BC – c. 50 AD, different types of warts were described.

In the early 18th century the physician Daniel Turner, who published the first book on dermatology, suggested that warts were caused by damaged nerves close to the skin.

In the mid-18th century, the surgeon John Hunter popularized the belief that warts were caused by a bacterial syphilis infection.

But in 1874 it was noted by the dermatologist Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra that while various theories were advanced by the medical profession, the "influences causing warts are still very obscure".

In 1976 the virologist Harald zur Hausen was the first to discover that warts were caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV).