WEBVTT - What Was The Great Pox? 0:00:02.040 --> 0:00:06.720 Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works, Hey, brain 0:00:06.760 --> 0:00:10.760 stuff luring vogel bomb here. William Shakespeare mentioned diseases often 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:14.320 in his plays, probably because he was literally surrounded by them, 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:17.240 I mean, aren't we all. But during his London based 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:21.040 lifetime in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds, such notorious illnesses 0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:25.560 as the bubonic plague, typhus, and malaria ravaged citizens, all 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:28.800 made more potent and deadly by rodents, over crowding and 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:33.760 virtually non existent sanitation systems. Also striking fear into the 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:36.960 hearts of just about everyone were small pox and the 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:41.760 Great pox, known today as syphilis. The two conditions actually 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:44.880 present similar rashes, despite being different in terms of type 0:00:44.920 --> 0:00:49.360 of infection and transmission. Smallpox is a virus spread by breathing. 0:00:49.640 --> 0:00:54.400 Syphilis is bacterial and almost always sexually transmitted. The hallmark 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:58.000 of both diseases was a body riddled with pustules, also 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:01.440 known as pox. It felt the people to distinguish between 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:04.880 these horrors. Thus syphilis became known as the Great pox, 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:07.560 not because the pock marks of syphilis were larger than 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:10.440 those of smallpox, but rather because, in the fifteen to 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:15.280 seventeenth centuries, it was the greater fear. Syphilis was likely 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:18.160 introduced to Europe when Christopher Columbus, a little that guy 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:20.639 and his crew brought it back from the New World 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:24.039 in fourteen nine three. Although there are other theories, the 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:27.920 timing is definitely suspect. The pandemic began in Europe pretty 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:31.000 much right after they returned, killing many. Even those who 0:01:30.959 --> 0:01:33.560 were lucky enough to survive were typically covered in scars 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:36.840 and went blind. Of course, the Europeans, for their part, 0:01:37.120 --> 0:01:39.920 left behind smallpox and other diseases in the New World, 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:43.560 sometimes intentionally, which how long with slavery, would wipe out 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:47.600 millions of Native Americans. Fortunately, smallpox has now been eradicated 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:51.760 by vaccine, and we have penicillin to treat syphilis. Shakespeare's 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:54.200 writings indicate an interest in syphilis, such as in the 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:56.680 play tim And of Athens, where he references the use 0:01:56.680 --> 0:02:00.080 of inhaled vaporized mercury salts, a common treatment for the 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:02.520 disease at the time. In fact, one of his best 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:05.840 known quotes was originally a reference to syphilis. A plague 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:08.760 on both your houses from Romeo and Juliet was first 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:13.320 a pox on both your houses. Thanks to multiple references 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:16.400 of syphilis, and his works. Historians have wondered whether Shakespeare 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:19.120 himself was infected. Known for being a little bit of 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:21.800 a hustler, his signature during the last years of his 0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:25.400 life indicates that he experienced a tremor, which is a 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:28.520 common side effect of mercury poisoning, which, as we said, 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:31.720 was the treatment of choice for syphilis. Of course, any 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:34.120 number of physical ailments can cause a tremor, so it's 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:42.560 unlikely that this posthumous diagnosis will ever be confirmed. Today's 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:45.280 episode was written by Alia Hoyt and produced by Tyler Clang. 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:48.280 You can find brain stuff, phone cases, and other brain 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:50.760 stuff in our shop at tea Public dot com, slash 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:52.960 brain stuff, and of course, for more on this and 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:55.960 lots of other POxy topics, visit our home planet, how 0:02:56.000 --> 0:03:08.399 Stuff Works dot com.