I think I find reading about the history of syphilis so interesting because I just find it hard imagining societies coping for so long with an illness that was so devastating to the individual and their family, and so closely tied to personal behaviour. It's like the first decade of AIDS, but going on for four or five centuries.
Here are some bits of information about syphilis which I don't think I had heard before:
The theories surrounding the disease were are as dramatic as the symptoms: an astrological conjunction of the planets, the boils of Job, a punishment of a wrathful God disgusted by fornication or, as some suggested even then, an entirely new plague brought from the new world by the soldiers of Columbus and fermented in the loins of Neapolitan prostitutes.The boils of Job seems a pretty apt guess, I suppose.
There seems to be a hint of exaggeration here:
Whatever the cause, the horror and the agony were indisputable. "So cruel, so distressing, so appalling that until now nothing more terrible or disgusting has ever been known on this earth," says the German humanist Joseph Grunpeck, who, when he fell victim, bemoaned how "the wound on my priapic gland became so swollen, that both hands could scarcely encircle it."I don't think I knew wet nurses could pass it on to babies:
Erring husbands gave it to wives who sometimes passed it on to children, though they might also get it from suckling infected wet-nurses.This seems a novel suggestion:
In a manifestly corrupt church, the give-away "purple flowers" (as the repeated attacks were euphemistically known) that decorated the faces of priests, cardinals, even a pope, were indisputable evidence that celibacy was unenforceable. When Luther, a monk, married a nun, forcing the hand of the Catholic church to resist similar reform in itself, syphilis became one of the reasons the Catholic church is still in such trouble today.I hadn't heard this suggestion before either:
Those who could buy care also bought silence – the confidentiality of the modern doctor/patient relationship has it roots in the treatment of syphilis.What about this horrible plan for husbands who wanted to secretly treat their spouse:
The old adage "a night with Venus; a lifetime with Mercury" reveals all manner of horrors, from men suffocating in overheated steam baths to quacks who peddled chocolate drinks laced with mercury so that infected husbands could treat their wives and families without them knowing. Even court fashion is part of the story, with pancake makeup and beauty spots as much a response to recurrent attacks of syphilis as survivors of smallpox.And what about that last sentence - as you can tell, there is a lot here that is new to me.
As to the famous who may had suffered from it, there are a few names on this list I hadn't heard mentioned before:
Detective work by writers such as Deborah Hayden (The Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis) count Schubert, Schumann, Baudelaire, Maupassant, Flaubert, Van Gogh, Nietzsche, Wilde and Joyce with contentious evidence around Beethoven and Hitler.The mystery of how "hysteria" became the fad of the day that Freud and his ilk were so interested in may also be connected:
Late 19th-century French culture was a particularly rich stew of sexual desire and fear. Upmarket Paris restaurants had private rooms where the clientele could enjoy more than food, and in opera foyers patrons could view and "reserve" young girls for later. At the same time, the authorities were rounding up, testing and treating prostitutes, often too late for themselves or the wives. As the fear grew, so did the interest in disturbed women. Charcot's clinic exhibited examples of hysteria, prompting the question now as to how far that diagnosis might have been covering up the workings of syphilis. Freud noted the impact of the disease inside the family when analysing his early female patients.All very fascinating. I should read an entire book on the subject, perhaps.
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