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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works, Hey, brain

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Speaker 1: stuff luring vogel bomb here. William Shakespeare mentioned diseases often

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Speaker 1: in his plays, probably because he was literally surrounded by them,

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Speaker 1: I mean, aren't we all. But during his London based

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Speaker 1: lifetime in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds, such notorious illnesses

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Speaker 1: as the bubonic plague, typhus, and malaria ravaged citizens, all

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Speaker 1: made more potent and deadly by rodents, over crowding and

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Speaker 1: virtually non existent sanitation systems. Also striking fear into the

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Speaker 1: hearts of just about everyone were small pox and the

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Speaker 1: Great pox, known today as syphilis. The two conditions actually

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Speaker 1: present similar rashes, despite being different in terms of type

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Speaker 1: of infection and transmission. Smallpox is a virus spread by breathing.

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Speaker 1: Syphilis is bacterial and almost always sexually transmitted. The hallmark

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Speaker 1: of both diseases was a body riddled with pustules, also

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Speaker 1: known as pox. It felt the people to distinguish between

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Speaker 1: these horrors. Thus syphilis became known as the Great pox,

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Speaker 1: not because the pock marks of syphilis were larger than

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Speaker 1: those of smallpox, but rather because, in the fifteen to

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Speaker 1: seventeenth centuries, it was the greater fear. Syphilis was likely

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Speaker 1: introduced to Europe when Christopher Columbus, a little that guy

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Speaker 1: and his crew brought it back from the New World

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Speaker 1: in fourteen nine three. Although there are other theories, the

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Speaker 1: timing is definitely suspect. The pandemic began in Europe pretty

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Speaker 1: much right after they returned, killing many. Even those who

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Speaker 1: were lucky enough to survive were typically covered in scars

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Speaker 1: and went blind. Of course, the Europeans, for their part,

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Speaker 1: left behind smallpox and other diseases in the New World,

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Speaker 1: sometimes intentionally, which how long with slavery, would wipe out

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Speaker 1: millions of Native Americans. Fortunately, smallpox has now been eradicated

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Speaker 1: by vaccine, and we have penicillin to treat syphilis. Shakespeare's

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Speaker 1: writings indicate an interest in syphilis, such as in the

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Speaker 1: play tim And of Athens, where he references the use

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Speaker 1: of inhaled vaporized mercury salts, a common treatment for the

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Speaker 1: disease at the time. In fact, one of his best

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Speaker 1: known quotes was originally a reference to syphilis. A plague

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Speaker 1: on both your houses from Romeo and Juliet was first

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Speaker 1: a pox on both your houses. Thanks to multiple references

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Speaker 1: of syphilis, and his works. Historians have wondered whether Shakespeare

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Speaker 1: himself was infected. Known for being a little bit of

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Speaker 1: a hustler, his signature during the last years of his

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Speaker 1: life indicates that he experienced a tremor, which is a

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Speaker 1: common side effect of mercury poisoning, which, as we said,

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Speaker 1: was the treatment of choice for syphilis. Of course, any

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Speaker 1: number of physical ailments can cause a tremor, so it's

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Speaker 1: unlikely that this posthumous diagnosis will ever be confirmed. Today's

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Speaker 1: episode was written by Alia Hoyt and produced by Tyler Clang.

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Speaker 1: You can find brain stuff, phone cases, and other brain

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Speaker 1: stuff in our shop at tea Public dot com, slash

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Speaker 1: brain stuff, and of course, for more on this and

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Speaker 1: lots of other POxy topics, visit our home planet, how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com.