1
00:00:43,880 --> 00:00:47,400
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh and this is this Podcast will

2
00:00:47,479 --> 00:00:51,760
Speaker 1: Kill You. Welcome to the tp w k Y book Club,

3
00:00:52,159 --> 00:00:55,800
Speaker 1: a series where I invite authors of popular science and

4
00:00:55,880 --> 00:00:58,840
Speaker 1: medicine books to the show to chat with me about

5
00:00:58,840 --> 00:01:02,520
Speaker 1: their latest work. It's been such a fun series to

6
00:01:02,560 --> 00:01:07,000
Speaker 1: put together, really making my inner bookworm so happy, and

7
00:01:07,200 --> 00:01:10,679
Speaker 1: we've covered some great topics over the years. If you'd

8
00:01:10,760 --> 00:01:13,320
Speaker 1: like to see what we've featured in the past, or

9
00:01:13,480 --> 00:01:15,320
Speaker 1: get a peek at some of the books that we're

10
00:01:15,360 --> 00:01:18,200
Speaker 1: planning to feature in the future, head on over to

11
00:01:18,280 --> 00:01:21,959
Speaker 1: our website This Podcast will Kill You dot Com. There,

12
00:01:22,120 --> 00:01:25,680
Speaker 1: in addition to finding all sorts of goodies from transcripts

13
00:01:25,720 --> 00:01:28,640
Speaker 1: to sources, you'll find a link to our bookshop dot

14
00:01:28,760 --> 00:01:33,039
Speaker 1: org affiliate page. Under the extras tab on bookshop, you'll

15
00:01:33,040 --> 00:01:38,120
Speaker 1: see a bunch of TPWKY related booklists, including one for

16
00:01:38,200 --> 00:01:40,919
Speaker 1: this book club as well as the Kids book Club,

17
00:01:41,040 --> 00:01:44,400
Speaker 1: put together by Aaron Updike and post it on our socials,

18
00:01:44,640 --> 00:01:47,400
Speaker 1: So if you're not following us there already, you should be.

19
00:01:48,160 --> 00:01:49,800
Speaker 2: As always, we love.

20
00:01:49,640 --> 00:01:52,440
Speaker 1: Hearing from you all about these book club episodes and

21
00:01:52,680 --> 00:01:56,840
Speaker 1: about our other episodes. Your thoughts, your suggestions, We love it.

22
00:01:56,880 --> 00:01:57,120
Speaker 2: All.

23
00:01:57,680 --> 00:01:59,480
Speaker 1: The best way to get in touch is through the

24
00:01:59,560 --> 00:02:02,880
Speaker 1: contact us form on our website or through the submit

25
00:02:02,920 --> 00:02:05,760
Speaker 1: your first hand account form which you can also find

26
00:02:05,880 --> 00:02:09,720
Speaker 1: on our website. Two last things before moving on to

27
00:02:09,800 --> 00:02:12,480
Speaker 1: the Book of the Week, and that is to please rate,

28
00:02:12,639 --> 00:02:16,560
Speaker 1: review and subscribe. It truly helps us out. And second,

29
00:02:16,800 --> 00:02:19,640
Speaker 1: you can now find full video versions of most of

30
00:02:19,680 --> 00:02:23,720
Speaker 1: our regular season episodes on YouTube. Make sure you're subscribed

31
00:02:23,720 --> 00:02:26,799
Speaker 1: to the exactly right media YouTube channel so you never

32
00:02:26,880 --> 00:02:31,040
Speaker 1: miss a new episode drop. Londoners in the seventeenth and

33
00:02:31,160 --> 00:02:39,160
Speaker 1: eighteenth centuries were no strangers to infectious disease. Plague, tuberculosis, typhus, measles,

34
00:02:39,280 --> 00:02:43,560
Speaker 1: and smallpox all reared their pestilential heads at some point

35
00:02:43,680 --> 00:02:48,040
Speaker 1: or another. But alongside these well known and highly broadcast

36
00:02:48,080 --> 00:02:53,400
Speaker 1: afflictions lurked another disease so feared and so stigmatized that

37
00:02:53,440 --> 00:02:57,440
Speaker 1: it was sometimes known as the secret disease we know

38
00:02:57,560 --> 00:03:01,600
Speaker 1: it today as syphilis. Syphilis, or the pox, as it

39
00:03:01,680 --> 00:03:05,520
Speaker 1: was also called, was among the most feared diagnoses in

40
00:03:05,600 --> 00:03:09,399
Speaker 1: early modern London, not just because there were no effective

41
00:03:09,440 --> 00:03:12,919
Speaker 1: cures and it could lead to painful sores or even death.

42
00:03:13,480 --> 00:03:17,120
Speaker 1: If your pox infection became public knowledge, you would likely

43
00:03:17,160 --> 00:03:21,520
Speaker 1: face deep stigma and shame. You may even be ostracized

44
00:03:21,560 --> 00:03:24,600
Speaker 1: from your friends and family. With so much at stake,

45
00:03:24,840 --> 00:03:28,200
Speaker 1: it's no wonder people went to great lengths to manage

46
00:03:28,320 --> 00:03:32,600
Speaker 1: or conceal their condition. In The Dreaded Pox, Sex and

47
00:03:32,680 --> 00:03:37,320
Speaker 1: Disease and Early Modern London, author doctor Olivia Wiser, Associate

48
00:03:37,360 --> 00:03:42,080
Speaker 1: professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, peels

49
00:03:42,120 --> 00:03:45,480
Speaker 1: back the curtain on the most intimate facets of londoner's

50
00:03:45,520 --> 00:03:49,960
Speaker 1: lives centuries ago. Drawing from a wide variety of sources,

51
00:03:50,080 --> 00:03:55,920
Speaker 1: from court records to recipe books, poscure advertisements to personal diaries,

52
00:03:56,400 --> 00:04:00,160
Speaker 1: doctor Wiser transports readers back in time to the dirty

53
00:04:00,160 --> 00:04:04,400
Speaker 1: streets of London. Where might an impoverished maids seek help

54
00:04:04,440 --> 00:04:08,120
Speaker 1: for her infection? How might a gentleman choose between the

55
00:04:08,200 --> 00:04:11,960
Speaker 1: many ready made concoctions in the city's alleys, who were

56
00:04:12,000 --> 00:04:16,320
Speaker 1: behind these lauded tinctures and ointments that provided nothing more

57
00:04:16,400 --> 00:04:20,279
Speaker 1: than hope. The Dreaded Pox is a fascinating glimpse into

58
00:04:20,279 --> 00:04:23,760
Speaker 1: the daily lives of early modern Londoners as they navigated

59
00:04:23,760 --> 00:04:27,560
Speaker 1: a world where sex and shame were so deeply entangled.

60
00:04:28,200 --> 00:04:31,520
Speaker 1: While today we have more scientific knowledge and the ability

61
00:04:31,560 --> 00:04:35,760
Speaker 1: to treat and cure many sexually transmitted infections. That world

62
00:04:35,880 --> 00:04:39,479
Speaker 1: is still familiar to us in many ways, which leads

63
00:04:39,520 --> 00:04:43,080
Speaker 1: us to ask how far we have actually come and

64
00:04:43,279 --> 00:04:46,599
Speaker 1: how much further we still need to go. I had

65
00:04:46,640 --> 00:04:49,400
Speaker 1: such a great time chatting with doctor Wiser, and I'm

66
00:04:49,640 --> 00:04:53,080
Speaker 1: so excited to share our conversation with you all. So

67
00:04:53,240 --> 00:04:56,040
Speaker 1: let's just take a quick break and get right into it.

68
00:05:20,760 --> 00:05:23,120
Speaker 1: Doctor Wiser, thank you so much for joining me today.

69
00:05:23,480 --> 00:05:24,279
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.

70
00:05:24,920 --> 00:05:28,520
Speaker 1: I cannot wait to dive into the world of venereal

71
00:05:28,560 --> 00:05:31,960
Speaker 1: disease in the London of past centuries with you. It's

72
00:05:32,000 --> 00:05:34,360
Speaker 1: going to be a great time. And I'm curious, though,

73
00:05:34,360 --> 00:05:37,279
Speaker 1: could you tell me what drew you to this area

74
00:05:37,480 --> 00:05:39,040
Speaker 1: and this era of scholarship.

75
00:05:39,960 --> 00:05:42,479
Speaker 3: A lot of people know that there was a ton

76
00:05:42,720 --> 00:05:45,640
Speaker 3: of venereal disease in this time period. So this was

77
00:05:45,680 --> 00:05:49,880
Speaker 3: a rampant disease, and we know a lot about the

78
00:05:49,960 --> 00:05:53,640
Speaker 3: disease because just so many people seem to be affected

79
00:05:53,640 --> 00:05:56,800
Speaker 3: by it. There's some historians who predict that if you

80
00:05:56,839 --> 00:05:59,560
Speaker 3: were a grown up living in London in the seventeen hundreds,

81
00:05:59,560 --> 00:06:01,680
Speaker 3: you would have up to a twenty percent chance of

82
00:06:01,720 --> 00:06:04,800
Speaker 3: getting infected, which is an astounding number.

83
00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:07,400
Speaker 2: I don't know whether that's true.

84
00:06:07,680 --> 00:06:11,719
Speaker 3: I trust them, but it's just appalling, like how prevalent

85
00:06:11,800 --> 00:06:15,760
Speaker 3: this disease was. So we know a lot about the disease,

86
00:06:15,760 --> 00:06:17,200
Speaker 3: we know a lot less about what it was like

87
00:06:17,200 --> 00:06:18,560
Speaker 3: to live with it. So that was kind of the

88
00:06:18,640 --> 00:06:22,720
Speaker 3: historical problem that I faced. What was it like to

89
00:06:22,800 --> 00:06:24,720
Speaker 3: endure this disease? What was it like just for a

90
00:06:24,760 --> 00:06:26,360
Speaker 3: normal person living in the city.

91
00:06:26,920 --> 00:06:28,880
Speaker 2: And so the answer to kind of.

92
00:06:28,800 --> 00:06:33,799
Speaker 3: Do that work, I tried to look in non medical places,

93
00:06:33,960 --> 00:06:37,719
Speaker 3: So I tried to look outside hospitals, outside, I did

94
00:06:37,720 --> 00:06:40,039
Speaker 3: look in consultation rooms, but I tried to look in

95
00:06:40,200 --> 00:06:43,440
Speaker 3: everyday sites in the city to try to recover just

96
00:06:43,640 --> 00:06:45,960
Speaker 3: lived experiences with this disease.

97
00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:48,839
Speaker 2: And what I ended up writing was a book.

98
00:06:48,680 --> 00:06:50,800
Speaker 3: That's as much about the history of a city as

99
00:06:50,800 --> 00:06:52,040
Speaker 3: it is about the history.

100
00:06:51,800 --> 00:06:54,480
Speaker 2: Of a disease, which is what I love so much

101
00:06:54,480 --> 00:06:54,880
Speaker 2: about it.

102
00:06:54,920 --> 00:06:58,840
Speaker 1: You really transport readers to this era before germ theory,

103
00:06:59,279 --> 00:07:02,280
Speaker 1: where London is growing at such a rapid pace and

104
00:07:02,440 --> 00:07:05,279
Speaker 1: sex is changing. You know, all of these different components

105
00:07:05,279 --> 00:07:08,120
Speaker 1: are changing, but also at the same time we have

106
00:07:08,279 --> 00:07:12,400
Speaker 1: these sentiments of shame and secrecy that surround not only sex,

107
00:07:12,440 --> 00:07:14,720
Speaker 1: but and then of course anything that's tied to sex,

108
00:07:14,800 --> 00:07:18,640
Speaker 1: including this disease. And you know we talked about we've

109
00:07:18,680 --> 00:07:21,360
Speaker 1: been talking about this disease. Is what is pox like?

110
00:07:21,440 --> 00:07:25,720
Speaker 1: What what could pox be used to describe or label

111
00:07:26,120 --> 00:07:28,600
Speaker 1: in terms of our modern classifications of disease.

112
00:07:29,240 --> 00:07:31,600
Speaker 3: It's a great question and one that I get a lot.

113
00:07:32,120 --> 00:07:35,640
Speaker 3: And my easy answer, if it's really helpful to have

114
00:07:35,720 --> 00:07:38,720
Speaker 3: some sort of modern disease equivalent in your head thinking

115
00:07:38,720 --> 00:07:42,480
Speaker 3: about this topic, My easy answer is syphilis. It's most

116
00:07:42,880 --> 00:07:45,840
Speaker 3: likely that's the disease we're talking about. The more kind

117
00:07:45,840 --> 00:07:48,800
Speaker 3: of historically accurate answer is it could be any number

118
00:07:48,840 --> 00:07:52,440
Speaker 3: of STIs what we would call STIs, So you know,

119
00:07:52,560 --> 00:07:56,120
Speaker 3: you think chlamydia, gottar rhea, syphilis, it could.

120
00:07:55,920 --> 00:07:56,800
Speaker 2: Be any of those.

121
00:07:56,920 --> 00:08:01,560
Speaker 3: And they used this term venereal disease, this umbrella category

122
00:08:01,760 --> 00:08:04,920
Speaker 3: that was expansive, so all of these what we now

123
00:08:04,960 --> 00:08:08,800
Speaker 3: differentiate as different astis were kind of all encompassed within

124
00:08:08,920 --> 00:08:12,400
Speaker 3: that one term. They in the past pre germ theory,

125
00:08:12,480 --> 00:08:15,760
Speaker 3: like you mentioned, they didn't differentiate these categories the way

126
00:08:15,760 --> 00:08:18,320
Speaker 3: we do. But it can be helpful to kind of

127
00:08:18,400 --> 00:08:20,280
Speaker 3: have that in your mind to just think about, like

128
00:08:20,520 --> 00:08:23,840
Speaker 3: what was happening to these people's bodies, you know, like

129
00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:26,360
Speaker 3: were they what were their symptoms, what were they enduring?

130
00:08:27,160 --> 00:08:30,400
Speaker 1: You talked about how pos was or venereal disease was

131
00:08:30,480 --> 00:08:33,240
Speaker 1: so common in this era. I mean you like twenty

132
00:08:33,280 --> 00:08:38,480
Speaker 1: percent possible lifetime risk, which is mind blowing. Again, why

133
00:08:38,920 --> 00:08:39,640
Speaker 1: was it so high?

134
00:08:39,679 --> 00:08:40,000
Speaker 2: Like what?

135
00:08:40,360 --> 00:08:44,400
Speaker 1: How was sex changing in London during the seventeenth and

136
00:08:44,480 --> 00:08:45,360
Speaker 1: eighteenth centuries.

137
00:08:46,080 --> 00:08:49,199
Speaker 3: A lot of historians of sexuality have argued that sex

138
00:08:49,360 --> 00:08:51,800
Speaker 3: was changing a lot that people have used the word.

139
00:08:51,720 --> 00:08:53,840
Speaker 2: Revolution like a sexual revolution.

140
00:08:53,520 --> 00:08:55,280
Speaker 3: In this time period, and there is a lot of

141
00:08:55,280 --> 00:08:57,960
Speaker 3: evidence that sex was changing, that people were just having

142
00:08:58,000 --> 00:09:01,760
Speaker 3: more sex outside of marriage. There was many there's much

143
00:09:01,760 --> 00:09:04,920
Speaker 3: more evidence of men having sex with other men, the

144
00:09:04,960 --> 00:09:07,840
Speaker 3: development of what we're called molly houses, like kind of

145
00:09:07,880 --> 00:09:11,640
Speaker 3: like the proto gay club, and so there is evidence

146
00:09:11,679 --> 00:09:15,319
Speaker 3: that there's just more sexual activity.

147
00:09:14,760 --> 00:09:18,880
Speaker 2: In this time period. My sense from writing this book.

148
00:09:18,800 --> 00:09:22,320
Speaker 3: Is and a lot of what I see changing is

149
00:09:22,400 --> 00:09:25,120
Speaker 3: more due to the changes of the city as opposed

150
00:09:25,160 --> 00:09:28,240
Speaker 3: to changes in sexual behavior that the city. Because it's

151
00:09:28,240 --> 00:09:30,360
Speaker 3: such a London specific story and I think it would

152
00:09:30,400 --> 00:09:32,440
Speaker 3: be a very different book if it were a different

153
00:09:32,800 --> 00:09:37,280
Speaker 3: geographical location. It's a very London story because the city

154
00:09:37,360 --> 00:09:43,239
Speaker 3: was changing demographically, commercially, it was just growing so exponentially

155
00:09:43,280 --> 00:09:46,280
Speaker 3: in this time period. There's this huge influx of people,

156
00:09:46,800 --> 00:09:51,000
Speaker 3: this urban, dense mobile population, a huge influx in consumerism,

157
00:09:51,160 --> 00:09:55,880
Speaker 3: and all of that creates this kind of chaotic environment

158
00:09:55,960 --> 00:09:58,360
Speaker 3: where on a concrete level there was just a lot

159
00:09:58,440 --> 00:10:03,640
Speaker 3: of transactional sex happening, and then a lot of disease,

160
00:10:04,360 --> 00:10:07,679
Speaker 3: and then also a whole market that kind of develops

161
00:10:08,120 --> 00:10:12,560
Speaker 3: to treat it. So the kind of short answer is, yes,

162
00:10:12,760 --> 00:10:15,079
Speaker 3: just more people are having sex. And also I think

163
00:10:15,200 --> 00:10:20,160
Speaker 3: what's really changing is this urban center that accommodates this

164
00:10:20,280 --> 00:10:23,640
Speaker 3: kind of hot bed of sexual activity and disease.

165
00:10:24,360 --> 00:10:28,240
Speaker 1: As you describe sex, it was transactional nature, but it

166
00:10:28,280 --> 00:10:31,559
Speaker 1: was also a private matter, like it wasn't necessarily something

167
00:10:31,600 --> 00:10:36,320
Speaker 1: that was discussed openly, and venereal disease was also called

168
00:10:36,400 --> 00:10:39,960
Speaker 1: the secret disease, which kind of denotes again it's shameful nature.

169
00:10:40,440 --> 00:10:44,600
Speaker 1: And so given these intense pressures to remain silent about

170
00:10:44,640 --> 00:10:47,400
Speaker 1: sex or about the pox, I'm guessing it's not something

171
00:10:47,480 --> 00:10:51,200
Speaker 1: that was openly written about for many people, whether in

172
00:10:51,280 --> 00:10:54,160
Speaker 1: diaries or not. And so I'm curious about your sources

173
00:10:54,200 --> 00:10:56,960
Speaker 1: and what types of sources did you find helpful in

174
00:10:57,000 --> 00:10:59,360
Speaker 1: researching for this, and how often did you have to

175
00:11:00,120 --> 00:11:01,640
Speaker 1: read between the lines.

176
00:11:02,120 --> 00:11:04,320
Speaker 3: A lot I had to read between a lot of

177
00:11:04,400 --> 00:11:08,160
Speaker 3: lines I did. My initial take was exactly what you mentioned.

178
00:11:08,280 --> 00:11:12,760
Speaker 3: I'm going to look in private writing people. Certainly, if

179
00:11:12,800 --> 00:11:17,439
Speaker 3: you're dealing with such a stigmatizing kind of life altering ailment,

180
00:11:17,760 --> 00:11:20,400
Speaker 3: surely you wrote about it. And it was really hard

181
00:11:20,400 --> 00:11:24,680
Speaker 3: to find people writing about their firsthand experiences in personal writing.

182
00:11:24,800 --> 00:11:28,520
Speaker 3: So I found lots of examples of people describing other

183
00:11:28,679 --> 00:11:33,360
Speaker 3: people in letters or diaries, much harder to find first

184
00:11:33,360 --> 00:11:36,000
Speaker 3: person accounts. That makes sense for all the reasons you

185
00:11:36,040 --> 00:11:39,000
Speaker 3: just said, it's this deeply stigmatizing disease. People didn't want

186
00:11:39,040 --> 00:11:42,880
Speaker 3: to admit they had it. They would use euphemisms. So

187
00:11:43,160 --> 00:11:45,679
Speaker 3: what I did was I tried to think creatively, what

188
00:11:45,720 --> 00:11:48,160
Speaker 3: are other kinds of sources I can use to get

189
00:11:48,240 --> 00:11:53,160
Speaker 3: at that experience outside of personal writing. So I looked

190
00:11:53,200 --> 00:11:55,840
Speaker 3: to recipe books to try to kind of recover what

191
00:11:55,880 --> 00:11:58,920
Speaker 3: people were doing at home in these semi private moments.

192
00:11:59,640 --> 00:12:03,720
Speaker 3: How we're people trying to treat themselves privately. I looked

193
00:12:03,760 --> 00:12:07,040
Speaker 3: to court records to try to get access to kind

194
00:12:07,080 --> 00:12:11,480
Speaker 3: of non elite people giving testimony in court where the

195
00:12:11,480 --> 00:12:14,360
Speaker 3: disease comes up in court. So I tried to also

196
00:12:14,720 --> 00:12:18,640
Speaker 3: use sources that we know that historians have used for

197
00:12:18,720 --> 00:12:22,319
Speaker 3: decades to talk about this disease and study this disease,

198
00:12:22,679 --> 00:12:26,800
Speaker 3: like advertisements for patent drugs, so what we would call

199
00:12:26,880 --> 00:12:30,040
Speaker 3: over the counter cures, but I tried to look at

200
00:12:30,040 --> 00:12:32,000
Speaker 3: them in a new way. So the kind of typical

201
00:12:32,040 --> 00:12:34,920
Speaker 3: way historians use these sources is they look at how

202
00:12:35,040 --> 00:12:39,520
Speaker 3: healers are promoting themselves, how they're marketing their drugs. I

203
00:12:39,600 --> 00:12:42,000
Speaker 3: decided to look at the address printed at the bottom

204
00:12:42,000 --> 00:12:44,200
Speaker 3: of the ad, which is where the healer said you

205
00:12:44,200 --> 00:12:46,920
Speaker 3: can come by my pill or come get my elixir.

206
00:12:47,400 --> 00:12:50,000
Speaker 3: And it wasn't always at their house. It was sometimes

207
00:12:50,080 --> 00:12:53,120
Speaker 3: an address to a bookstall, or a chocolate shop or

208
00:12:53,400 --> 00:12:56,800
Speaker 3: a bakery. And I decided to make a map of

209
00:12:56,840 --> 00:13:00,840
Speaker 3: where you can find cures for this disease. So it's

210
00:13:00,960 --> 00:13:04,360
Speaker 3: just one example of using a historical source we know

211
00:13:04,480 --> 00:13:07,160
Speaker 3: about that's been used many many times, but just trying

212
00:13:07,160 --> 00:13:09,920
Speaker 3: to use it in a new, more creative way to

213
00:13:09,960 --> 00:13:12,240
Speaker 3: get at a different slice of the story.

214
00:13:13,360 --> 00:13:16,000
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break, and when we get back,

215
00:13:16,200 --> 00:13:35,720
Speaker 1: there's still so much to discuss. Welcome back everyone. I've

216
00:13:35,760 --> 00:13:39,040
Speaker 1: been chatting with doctor Olivia Wiser about her book The

217
00:13:39,120 --> 00:13:42,960
Speaker 1: Dreaded Pox, Sex and Disease in Early modern London. Let's

218
00:13:43,000 --> 00:13:46,520
Speaker 1: get back into things, not just what this disease, the

219
00:13:46,520 --> 00:13:49,400
Speaker 1: effect of this disease on someone's body, but the effect

220
00:13:49,400 --> 00:13:53,040
Speaker 1: that it had on their social standing, on their relationships,

221
00:13:53,040 --> 00:13:56,880
Speaker 1: on how they viewed themselves. And there was early on

222
00:13:56,920 --> 00:13:59,000
Speaker 1: in your book a really fascinating kind of series of

223
00:13:59,040 --> 00:14:02,920
Speaker 1: diary entries where Samuel Peeps writes about his brother and

224
00:14:02,960 --> 00:14:05,280
Speaker 1: there's this kind of question of does he have a

225
00:14:05,800 --> 00:14:08,719
Speaker 1: venereal disease? Is he dying of venereal disease? Is he

226
00:14:08,760 --> 00:14:12,720
Speaker 1: getting the all clear? And just these intense emotional perspectives

227
00:14:12,760 --> 00:14:16,640
Speaker 1: of how someone's relationship is changing based on a diagnosis.

228
00:14:17,240 --> 00:14:19,640
Speaker 1: And I thought that was just a really fascinating glimpse

229
00:14:19,720 --> 00:14:23,000
Speaker 1: into the effect that this disease could have on someone's life.

230
00:14:23,440 --> 00:14:25,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's a great example of how those third

231
00:14:25,520 --> 00:14:28,520
Speaker 3: party you know, before I was saying, oh, it's so frustrating,

232
00:14:28,560 --> 00:14:30,920
Speaker 3: I can't get a first person account. Peeps isn't writing

233
00:14:30,920 --> 00:14:33,600
Speaker 3: about himself, He's writing about his brother. But it still

234
00:14:33,960 --> 00:14:36,320
Speaker 3: has so much to offer us in terms of kind

235
00:14:36,360 --> 00:14:40,040
Speaker 3: of insight into just the emotional toil of a diagnosis.

236
00:14:40,080 --> 00:14:42,000
Speaker 3: Because of course Peeps is just worried about himself. He's

237
00:14:42,000 --> 00:14:43,600
Speaker 3: worried about number one. What is this going to do

238
00:14:43,640 --> 00:14:46,640
Speaker 3: to my reputation? We have the same last name? What

239
00:14:46,680 --> 00:14:49,560
Speaker 3: are we going to do? So? And I just love

240
00:14:50,280 --> 00:14:54,600
Speaker 3: this diary by Samuel Peeps. It's just really intimate and

241
00:14:55,160 --> 00:14:58,600
Speaker 3: candid in a way that we don't often see in diaries.

242
00:14:59,240 --> 00:15:01,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's fun. I was like, we need a

243
00:15:01,520 --> 00:15:02,920
Speaker 2: TV show based on.

244
00:15:02,880 --> 00:15:07,200
Speaker 3: This diary's I support that. I would watch it. I

245
00:15:07,200 --> 00:15:09,320
Speaker 3: would love to consult on it. Just on the record.

246
00:15:09,520 --> 00:15:11,160
Speaker 2: Thank you great, well, I think we have an idea

247
00:15:11,200 --> 00:15:12,120
Speaker 2: in place. Let's go.

248
00:15:12,240 --> 00:15:18,520
Speaker 1: Yeah. And in addition to these, you know, court records, advertisements,

249
00:15:18,600 --> 00:15:22,720
Speaker 1: personal diaries, the pox also makes an appearance in creative

250
00:15:22,760 --> 00:15:25,200
Speaker 1: work from this era, whether and it's in a song

251
00:15:25,400 --> 00:15:27,120
Speaker 1: or a book or a play or an opera or

252
00:15:27,120 --> 00:15:29,880
Speaker 1: something like that. When it does make an appearance, what

253
00:15:30,240 --> 00:15:32,000
Speaker 1: did it signify?

254
00:15:32,040 --> 00:15:37,440
Speaker 3: It almost always signified debauchery or vice or illicit behavior.

255
00:15:37,840 --> 00:15:40,280
Speaker 3: And I mean it when you look in court records

256
00:15:40,480 --> 00:15:43,640
Speaker 3: that have nothing to do with sex, court records for

257
00:15:44,040 --> 00:15:46,240
Speaker 3: you know, I looked at a lot for marriage separation,

258
00:15:46,960 --> 00:15:50,440
Speaker 3: things that aren't sexual necessarily, it comes up as just

259
00:15:50,600 --> 00:15:56,120
Speaker 3: like a slander for just bad illicit negative. It's often

260
00:15:56,440 --> 00:16:02,760
Speaker 3: used to describe women. So the disease typically kind of stereotypically.

261
00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:03,880
Speaker 2: Was blamed on women.

262
00:16:04,520 --> 00:16:07,960
Speaker 3: And there's lots of medical debates about how women there's

263
00:16:08,000 --> 00:16:12,320
Speaker 3: something about women's bodies physiologically that make them prone to

264
00:16:12,840 --> 00:16:16,360
Speaker 3: not only spreading the disease but somehow like creating fomenting

265
00:16:16,400 --> 00:16:20,240
Speaker 3: it in their hot wombs. And so this phrase pocky

266
00:16:20,240 --> 00:16:23,280
Speaker 3: horror was used all the time as just kind of

267
00:16:23,360 --> 00:16:27,520
Speaker 3: like a general slander to just connote bad immoral behavior.

268
00:16:27,800 --> 00:16:29,200
Speaker 3: You know, there are lots of debates where did it

269
00:16:29,240 --> 00:16:30,600
Speaker 3: come from? Is it from the New world? Is it

270
00:16:30,640 --> 00:16:32,080
Speaker 3: from the old world? And there were a lot of

271
00:16:32,120 --> 00:16:35,200
Speaker 3: assumptions that at first it comes from women. It must

272
00:16:35,280 --> 00:16:37,840
Speaker 3: be you know, women are to blame obviously time and again.

273
00:16:39,280 --> 00:16:42,080
Speaker 3: And then as the you know, Londoners at least are

274
00:16:42,120 --> 00:16:44,200
Speaker 3: seeing all these new kinds of people that they had

275
00:16:44,200 --> 00:16:47,080
Speaker 3: never seen before in diseases, and plants come into the

276
00:16:47,120 --> 00:16:50,320
Speaker 3: metropol from these New World explorations, it kind of shifts

277
00:16:50,360 --> 00:16:53,480
Speaker 3: a little bit, and there's this layering of well it

278
00:16:53,560 --> 00:16:58,320
Speaker 3: also this disease also must originate in women's bodies who

279
00:16:58,320 --> 00:17:01,920
Speaker 3: are from hot climates, something about their hotness, their heat.

280
00:17:02,360 --> 00:17:04,520
Speaker 3: And then there's all these debates that it must come

281
00:17:04,560 --> 00:17:06,600
Speaker 3: from the New World. It couldn't possibly come from here,

282
00:17:07,160 --> 00:17:09,840
Speaker 3: and it's being brought from the New World, and therefore

283
00:17:09,920 --> 00:17:12,360
Speaker 3: we need to ingest the plants from the New World

284
00:17:12,440 --> 00:17:15,919
Speaker 3: as our treatment because they will be suited best to

285
00:17:16,000 --> 00:17:19,040
Speaker 3: treat this disease. So there is lots of talk about

286
00:17:19,080 --> 00:17:22,040
Speaker 3: who to blame, and there's a whole nother discourse about like,

287
00:17:22,480 --> 00:17:24,280
Speaker 3: you know, the English call it the French disease because

288
00:17:24,280 --> 00:17:26,159
Speaker 3: it comes from France, and the French called the Italian

289
00:17:26,160 --> 00:17:31,040
Speaker 3: disease because you know, and everyone's passing shift the blame, yeah, exactly,

290
00:17:31,160 --> 00:17:34,360
Speaker 3: passing the blame around. So there's definitely debates about it,

291
00:17:34,600 --> 00:17:37,240
Speaker 3: and they never settle on one answer.

292
00:17:37,400 --> 00:17:40,760
Speaker 2: It's always up for debate exactly, of course, of course.

293
00:17:41,200 --> 00:17:45,000
Speaker 1: And so even when this idea of where it came

294
00:17:45,040 --> 00:17:48,320
Speaker 1: from shifted, it still was women at the source of it.

295
00:17:48,359 --> 00:17:51,240
Speaker 1: They were like were men ever blamed or was it

296
00:17:51,280 --> 00:17:55,240
Speaker 1: ever thought like this is his fault for you know whatever.

297
00:17:55,640 --> 00:17:56,679
Speaker 2: It's such a good question.

298
00:17:56,840 --> 00:17:59,560
Speaker 3: And if you look in the obvious places, and by

299
00:17:59,600 --> 00:18:03,800
Speaker 3: obvious I mean historical documents that are about the disease

300
00:18:04,040 --> 00:18:07,439
Speaker 3: that say venereal disease on the cover, or the Great Pox,

301
00:18:07,480 --> 00:18:09,960
Speaker 3: these are all euphemisms for the same kind of nexus

302
00:18:09,960 --> 00:18:10,560
Speaker 3: of diseases.

303
00:18:10,720 --> 00:18:12,680
Speaker 2: It's always women. It's always women.

304
00:18:12,840 --> 00:18:16,040
Speaker 3: But when you start looking at non medical sources, at

305
00:18:16,080 --> 00:18:18,600
Speaker 3: the kinds of sources I've been talking about, so for example,

306
00:18:18,640 --> 00:18:22,400
Speaker 3: court records or women trying to sue for a separation

307
00:18:22,680 --> 00:18:25,639
Speaker 3: like basically a divorce, you see that it's not at

308
00:18:25,640 --> 00:18:28,720
Speaker 3: all a case that there's a difference between what I

309
00:18:28,760 --> 00:18:31,520
Speaker 3: would say is the discourse, like the narrative, the story

310
00:18:31,560 --> 00:18:34,520
Speaker 3: people tell, and the reality on the ground, and the

311
00:18:34,560 --> 00:18:36,800
Speaker 3: reality on the ground when you look at medical cases

312
00:18:37,000 --> 00:18:40,080
Speaker 3: of who's coming to get treated, and when you look

313
00:18:40,119 --> 00:18:44,080
Speaker 3: at court records and who's talking, it's so clearly not

314
00:18:44,280 --> 00:18:47,879
Speaker 3: women who are being blamed. It's time and again my

315
00:18:48,040 --> 00:18:51,240
Speaker 3: husband went to the bathhouse, slept with a prostitute, came

316
00:18:51,320 --> 00:18:55,720
Speaker 3: back infected me. I mean, it's so different from what

317
00:18:55,800 --> 00:18:58,160
Speaker 3: the discourse is in these other kinds of texts.

318
00:18:58,920 --> 00:19:01,399
Speaker 1: We've talked about how this is an era pre germ theory,

319
00:19:01,480 --> 00:19:04,480
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that contagion was not a concept.

320
00:19:04,520 --> 00:19:06,640
Speaker 1: And so, you know, just based on what you said,

321
00:19:06,680 --> 00:19:10,159
Speaker 1: it was clear that people saw the connection. It was like, okay,

322
00:19:10,160 --> 00:19:13,240
Speaker 1: well we know the root of transmission. How much did

323
00:19:13,480 --> 00:19:16,600
Speaker 1: just the act of sex? Was that everything? Or was

324
00:19:16,600 --> 00:19:19,480
Speaker 1: it also a role of constitution, type of sex? You know,

325
00:19:19,760 --> 00:19:22,920
Speaker 1: what were the set of circumstances that people believed led

326
00:19:22,960 --> 00:19:26,240
Speaker 1: to somebody else developing or transmitting pocs.

327
00:19:26,800 --> 00:19:30,439
Speaker 3: They absolutely understood the sexual connection. It was a different

328
00:19:30,520 --> 00:19:33,520
Speaker 3: kind of connection than what we have in our minds.

329
00:19:33,840 --> 00:19:36,280
Speaker 3: So we have in our minds you have sex with

330
00:19:36,359 --> 00:19:41,680
Speaker 3: someone who has an STI and you contracted. They had

331
00:19:41,680 --> 00:19:44,639
Speaker 3: a much more complex understanding of the role of sex

332
00:19:44,680 --> 00:19:48,479
Speaker 3: within just daily life, and so it wasn't necessarily just

333
00:19:48,800 --> 00:19:50,199
Speaker 3: sex with an infected person.

334
00:19:50,440 --> 00:19:51,400
Speaker 2: It could have been.

335
00:19:51,240 --> 00:19:54,840
Speaker 3: Too much sex, or the wrong kind of sex, or

336
00:19:55,680 --> 00:19:59,360
Speaker 3: not the kind of activity that is healthy for your

337
00:19:59,440 --> 00:20:02,320
Speaker 3: particular constitution. So it was a much more kind of

338
00:20:02,359 --> 00:20:06,600
Speaker 3: complicated interaction. And then layered on top of that, there

339
00:20:06,680 --> 00:20:09,359
Speaker 3: was also this belief that you could get this disease.

340
00:20:09,400 --> 00:20:10,720
Speaker 2: From non sexual interaction.

341
00:20:11,560 --> 00:20:16,280
Speaker 3: So there were two kind of forms of this disease,

342
00:20:16,320 --> 00:20:18,640
Speaker 3: and I'm saying disease as if it's this one thing

343
00:20:18,800 --> 00:20:22,320
Speaker 3: and it's just this kind of collection of symptoms. One

344
00:20:22,880 --> 00:20:25,440
Speaker 3: was what we might have in our minds, and this

345
00:20:25,480 --> 00:20:28,320
Speaker 3: is what they called the great pox, a true pox

346
00:20:28,400 --> 00:20:31,320
Speaker 3: is what they called it. And this is a more

347
00:20:31,400 --> 00:20:35,000
Speaker 3: severe form of venereal disease that you would get from

348
00:20:35,040 --> 00:20:38,840
Speaker 3: penetrative sex. And then there's this milder form, and that's

349
00:20:38,880 --> 00:20:41,440
Speaker 3: where we see words like clap and gnarrhea, which are

350
00:20:41,440 --> 00:20:44,520
Speaker 3: not kind of one to one. They don't correlate to

351
00:20:44,560 --> 00:20:47,440
Speaker 3: what we think of when we say those words today.

352
00:20:47,480 --> 00:20:49,760
Speaker 3: This was considered to be a milder form of the disease,

353
00:20:49,760 --> 00:20:52,320
Speaker 3: and you could get it from sharing a drink, a glass,

354
00:20:52,359 --> 00:20:54,520
Speaker 3: you could get it from there's one example I found

355
00:20:54,520 --> 00:20:59,200
Speaker 3: where someone shares a glove with somebody, or you can

356
00:20:59,240 --> 00:21:02,040
Speaker 3: get it from share a bed, and just like sweating

357
00:21:02,080 --> 00:21:04,679
Speaker 3: in the sheets. So the idea was that this milder

358
00:21:04,720 --> 00:21:07,800
Speaker 3: form of the disease you got from spreading pockey matters

359
00:21:07,840 --> 00:21:10,920
Speaker 3: what they called it, and that could be from sexual activity,

360
00:21:11,440 --> 00:21:15,720
Speaker 3: but it could also be from these non sexual activities.

361
00:21:15,760 --> 00:21:18,960
Speaker 3: And then to make it even more complicated, another way

362
00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:20,840
Speaker 3: you could get that mild form of the disease is

363
00:21:20,880 --> 00:21:23,960
Speaker 3: through not the spread of pocky matter, but just from

364
00:21:23,960 --> 00:21:27,240
Speaker 3: trauma to your genitals. So there's one man who talks

365
00:21:27,280 --> 00:21:30,080
Speaker 3: about falling off his horse and getting a clap, and

366
00:21:30,119 --> 00:21:33,360
Speaker 3: another case I found where someone talks about getting hit

367
00:21:33,400 --> 00:21:35,919
Speaker 3: in the groin with a stone and he gets the clap.

368
00:21:36,160 --> 00:21:38,960
Speaker 3: So I think the modern mind is like, wait, well,

369
00:21:38,960 --> 00:21:42,359
Speaker 3: what did he really have? And I don't know. I

370
00:21:42,520 --> 00:21:45,840
Speaker 3: just don't know. Maybe who knows. We'll never know. But

371
00:21:46,240 --> 00:21:50,119
Speaker 3: it gets very complicated when you especially when I was

372
00:21:50,160 --> 00:21:52,560
Speaker 3: looking at court records, where all of a sudden, the

373
00:21:52,600 --> 00:21:57,560
Speaker 3: difference between getting this disease from a stone versus someone

374
00:21:57,640 --> 00:22:01,960
Speaker 3: sexually assaulting you is huge, Right, That's a felony versus

375
00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:06,359
Speaker 3: a misdemeanor versus nothing. So it becomes really important in

376
00:22:06,400 --> 00:22:08,920
Speaker 3: certain contexts to kind of parse these types of diseases.

377
00:22:09,760 --> 00:22:13,800
Speaker 1: In your book, you describe the pos as seeming modern

378
00:22:13,920 --> 00:22:16,560
Speaker 1: for its moment, and you call it the first modern disease.

379
00:22:16,640 --> 00:22:19,120
Speaker 1: Can you tell me more about what you mean by

380
00:22:19,160 --> 00:22:22,960
Speaker 1: the first modern disease and how this perception is kind

381
00:22:22,960 --> 00:22:24,679
Speaker 1: of reflected in writing from the time.

382
00:22:25,640 --> 00:22:29,000
Speaker 3: I use that word to kind of capture the way

383
00:22:29,000 --> 00:22:31,439
Speaker 3: we think of disease, and I think it's something that

384
00:22:31,520 --> 00:22:34,600
Speaker 3: we take for granted that a disease is a biological

385
00:22:34,720 --> 00:22:37,159
Speaker 3: entity that affects all of us more or less the

386
00:22:37,200 --> 00:22:39,720
Speaker 3: same way. So if you and I both are given

387
00:22:39,760 --> 00:22:43,000
Speaker 3: the same diagnosis, will probably manifest the same set of symptoms.

388
00:22:43,119 --> 00:22:44,840
Speaker 3: If you and I have the same set of symptoms,

389
00:22:44,920 --> 00:22:48,280
Speaker 3: we'll probably be diagnosed with the same disease. That this

390
00:22:49,040 --> 00:22:53,240
Speaker 3: idea that diseases are fixed, that they are all affecting

391
00:22:53,240 --> 00:22:55,320
Speaker 3: all bodies more or less similarly, and that they are

392
00:22:55,359 --> 00:22:57,879
Speaker 3: treated and progressed more or less similarly. This is a

393
00:22:57,920 --> 00:23:02,080
Speaker 3: modern concept that's born in the nineteenth century. So this

394
00:23:02,160 --> 00:23:06,080
Speaker 3: book that I wrote is before any of that. It's

395
00:23:06,640 --> 00:23:10,119
Speaker 3: way before germs, the discovery of germs and germ theory.

396
00:23:10,680 --> 00:23:13,439
Speaker 3: But it's also before this kind of conceptual what I

397
00:23:13,440 --> 00:23:18,480
Speaker 3: would call revolution in thinking about diseases as stable, uniform entities.

398
00:23:18,680 --> 00:23:22,119
Speaker 3: So this time period, diseases, like we've been talking about,

399
00:23:22,359 --> 00:23:25,760
Speaker 3: they're fluid, they're a group of symptoms. You and I

400
00:23:25,800 --> 00:23:29,800
Speaker 3: could have the same symptoms and get completely different diagnoses.

401
00:23:29,840 --> 00:23:33,200
Speaker 3: Because you are in Denver and I am in Boston

402
00:23:33,359 --> 00:23:36,679
Speaker 3: and you live near a swamp and I don't, or whatever,

403
00:23:36,720 --> 00:23:39,840
Speaker 3: you had oatmeal for breakfast, whatever, right, Like, any number

404
00:23:39,880 --> 00:23:43,880
Speaker 3: of factors will be given completely different diagnoses and will

405
00:23:43,920 --> 00:23:47,040
Speaker 3: have completely different treatments. So this time period, this pre

406
00:23:47,119 --> 00:23:52,960
Speaker 3: modern era, diseases are fluid, they're individual, and they just

407
00:23:53,240 --> 00:23:58,359
Speaker 3: are symptom based, so they're very subjectively understood. And so

408
00:23:58,400 --> 00:24:00,440
Speaker 3: when I say this is the first modern day disease,

409
00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:03,600
Speaker 3: what I found in doing this research is that this

410
00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:08,080
Speaker 3: venereal disease looks more like our modern that kind of

411
00:24:08,080 --> 00:24:12,120
Speaker 3: post nineteenth century way of thinking about disease. And it's

412
00:24:12,160 --> 00:24:16,560
Speaker 3: not because of some revolutionary idea about disease progression or

413
00:24:16,840 --> 00:24:21,560
Speaker 3: some discovery of a bacteria or some kind of medical breakthrough.

414
00:24:21,600 --> 00:24:25,480
Speaker 3: It's just because the disease was so shameful, and that

415
00:24:25,560 --> 00:24:30,080
Speaker 3: it's the shame of the disease that leads healers, for example,

416
00:24:30,119 --> 00:24:32,879
Speaker 3: to look to bodies in ways that look bizarrely modern,

417
00:24:33,280 --> 00:24:36,080
Speaker 3: looking for patterns across bodies and ways that we don't

418
00:24:36,119 --> 00:24:39,280
Speaker 3: see until much much later in the nineteenth century, or

419
00:24:39,320 --> 00:24:42,600
Speaker 3: because of the shame of shopping for a cure, patients

420
00:24:42,640 --> 00:24:45,120
Speaker 3: look to over the counter cures, these kind of one

421
00:24:45,160 --> 00:24:48,800
Speaker 3: size fits all treatments that again are kind of out

422
00:24:48,840 --> 00:24:49,720
Speaker 3: of step with time.

423
00:24:50,160 --> 00:24:51,560
Speaker 2: So by looking in these.

424
00:24:51,520 --> 00:24:54,840
Speaker 3: Kind of non medical places, the kind of composite image

425
00:24:54,880 --> 00:24:56,720
Speaker 3: of the disease that I was able to piece together

426
00:24:57,400 --> 00:25:01,040
Speaker 3: looks more like a ninety teenth century kind of like

427
00:25:01,040 --> 00:25:04,119
Speaker 3: a modern disease then the other diseases of that moment.

428
00:25:04,920 --> 00:25:08,040
Speaker 3: And that's because of the stigma, not because of the science.

429
00:25:08,880 --> 00:25:10,960
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about this the other day, how

430
00:25:11,359 --> 00:25:17,160
Speaker 1: this huge transition into putting diseases into boxes, standardizing them. Everyone,

431
00:25:17,240 --> 00:25:20,320
Speaker 1: as you said, has the same signs and symptoms, has

432
00:25:20,359 --> 00:25:23,480
Speaker 1: the same diagnosis, has the same treatment, and is expected

433
00:25:23,520 --> 00:25:24,320
Speaker 1: to have the same.

434
00:25:24,119 --> 00:25:25,800
Speaker 2: Disease, you know, progression course.

435
00:25:26,560 --> 00:25:30,800
Speaker 1: And I feel like now we're finally like in modern

436
00:25:30,840 --> 00:25:33,320
Speaker 1: medicine today or like cutting edge is like it's all

437
00:25:33,359 --> 00:25:36,159
Speaker 1: about precision medicine, it's all about seeing each individual.

438
00:25:36,320 --> 00:25:39,480
Speaker 3: And so we've almost in a way come full circle totally.

439
00:25:39,760 --> 00:25:42,600
Speaker 3: They're so that's why I love studying this time period.

440
00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:46,800
Speaker 3: It's so unfamiliar, and yet the parallels are so mind blowing.

441
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:50,160
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's absolutely we have this kind

442
00:25:50,200 --> 00:25:53,359
Speaker 3: of tailored medicine today that in many ways almost mirrors

443
00:25:53,400 --> 00:25:56,159
Speaker 3: the kind of clinical encounters that I'm finding in this

444
00:25:56,200 --> 00:25:56,880
Speaker 3: pre modern era.

445
00:25:57,080 --> 00:25:58,240
Speaker 2: And the same with the market.

446
00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:01,800
Speaker 3: Right, I was talking about those advertisements and making that map.

447
00:26:02,960 --> 00:26:06,320
Speaker 3: What was so interesting making that map, What I found was, Oh,

448
00:26:06,800 --> 00:26:09,600
Speaker 3: these cures were sold everywhere. There was not like a

449
00:26:09,680 --> 00:26:11,840
Speaker 3: neighborhood where you would go get one of these cures.

450
00:26:11,840 --> 00:26:13,760
Speaker 3: They were sold everywhere, and they were sold out of

451
00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:18,920
Speaker 3: these anonymous non medical places, bookstores, bakeries, chocolate chops. And

452
00:26:19,040 --> 00:26:22,280
Speaker 3: to me, coming back to this point about parallels to today,

453
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:25,879
Speaker 3: it's almost like the leading edge of what we've achieved

454
00:26:25,880 --> 00:26:29,280
Speaker 3: today where you can just be in your pajamas online,

455
00:26:29,880 --> 00:26:34,119
Speaker 3: purchase whatever embarrassing thing you want to purchase, and no

456
00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:37,000
Speaker 3: one will ever know. And it's like we have achieved

457
00:26:37,040 --> 00:26:40,800
Speaker 3: the ultimate anonymous shopping experience. But we see this very

458
00:26:40,840 --> 00:26:43,920
Speaker 3: early history of it in the sixteen hundreds.

459
00:26:44,560 --> 00:26:45,960
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break here.

460
00:26:46,160 --> 00:27:02,120
Speaker 1: We'll be back before you know it. Welcome back, everyone,

461
00:27:02,600 --> 00:27:06,119
Speaker 1: I'm here chatting with the wonderful doctor Olivia Wiser about

462
00:27:06,160 --> 00:27:09,520
Speaker 1: her book The Dreaded Pox. Let's get into some more questions.

463
00:27:10,760 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 1: It was anonymous out of necessity, right, because of this

464
00:27:13,920 --> 00:27:17,920
Speaker 1: disease was so shameful, And I just kept thinking about

465
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:21,040
Speaker 1: how the doctors that were handing out these diagnoses held

466
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:24,080
Speaker 1: this tremendous amount of power in the knowledge that they had,

467
00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:26,919
Speaker 1: and just to kind of get a perspective on what

468
00:27:27,040 --> 00:27:30,199
Speaker 1: that power was or how impactful this diagnosis could be.

469
00:27:31,160 --> 00:27:34,960
Speaker 1: If someone's diagnosis was made public, what kinds of consequences

470
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:38,439
Speaker 1: might they face, and how did that differ based on

471
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:42,199
Speaker 1: things like their initial social standing, or their gender, or

472
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:45,080
Speaker 1: their race, Like how did all of these things kind

473
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:47,439
Speaker 1: of combine and to be like, the consequences are different

474
00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:48,800
Speaker 1: for each individual person.

475
00:27:49,600 --> 00:27:53,280
Speaker 3: It mattered more for women than for men, for sure,

476
00:27:53,359 --> 00:27:55,480
Speaker 3: And it comes back to what we were talking about earlier

477
00:27:55,520 --> 00:27:57,880
Speaker 3: about blame. There was a double standard in this society.

478
00:27:57,920 --> 00:28:02,119
Speaker 3: It was a deeply patriarchal society, and a woman's reputation

479
00:28:02,400 --> 00:28:06,959
Speaker 3: was intimately tied up in her sexual reputation. So a

480
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:10,879
Speaker 3: diagnosis of this disease, if you're a married woman, there

481
00:28:10,880 --> 00:28:15,040
Speaker 3: would be suspicions of adultery. If you were a servant,

482
00:28:15,119 --> 00:28:18,280
Speaker 3: let's say, an unmarried single woman working in someone's home

483
00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:19,240
Speaker 3: as a servant.

484
00:28:18,880 --> 00:28:20,399
Speaker 2: You would probably lose your job.

485
00:28:20,640 --> 00:28:23,000
Speaker 3: And there's a case that I talk about at length

486
00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:26,119
Speaker 3: in the book. That's exactly exactly what happens a servant.

487
00:28:26,840 --> 00:28:32,280
Speaker 3: She's suspected of having this disease. She's a caretaker of

488
00:28:32,359 --> 00:28:35,800
Speaker 3: small children in the home of merchant, and the children

489
00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:40,239
Speaker 3: end up getting this venereal disease, and the doctor who

490
00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:43,920
Speaker 3: comes decides there's nothing sexual, there's nothing on tooward happening here,

491
00:28:44,240 --> 00:28:46,680
Speaker 3: just it's one of those mild forms of the disease

492
00:28:47,040 --> 00:28:48,880
Speaker 3: that she spreads to the children by sharing a bed

493
00:28:48,880 --> 00:28:51,680
Speaker 3: with them through pocking matter. So she's sweating in the

494
00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:54,520
Speaker 3: bed and somehow they're getting the disease. But the problem

495
00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:56,960
Speaker 3: is she has it. She has the pox, and she

496
00:28:57,080 --> 00:28:59,400
Speaker 3: denies it, and they finally confront her and they find

497
00:28:59,520 --> 00:29:01,960
Speaker 3: hidden under her bed a box full of medicines that

498
00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:04,320
Speaker 3: are just for the pox, that are very clearly for

499
00:29:04,360 --> 00:29:06,960
Speaker 3: the pox. They're made of mercury and ingredients that you

500
00:29:07,040 --> 00:29:12,320
Speaker 3: obviously use to treat this disorder. And she's basically succumbs

501
00:29:12,320 --> 00:29:14,680
Speaker 3: to all the pressure and is like, okay, you got me, Yes,

502
00:29:15,040 --> 00:29:18,160
Speaker 3: I am poxed, and she she loses her job. So

503
00:29:18,240 --> 00:29:22,960
Speaker 3: there are absolutely severe repercussions for a diagnosis. And the

504
00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:25,640
Speaker 3: flip side is if you're a man and you're diagnosed.

505
00:29:25,880 --> 00:29:27,120
Speaker 2: It's not a big.

506
00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:29,760
Speaker 1: Deal, right, It's like, well, this wasn't your fault.

507
00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:32,960
Speaker 2: We understand. It happens to everyone. Boys will be boys,

508
00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:36,000
Speaker 2: Boys will be boys. Yeah, good stuff. Yeah.

509
00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:38,920
Speaker 1: And you know, speaking of I think another part of this,

510
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:42,720
Speaker 1: you know, boys will be boys, different consequences for different genders.

511
00:29:42,800 --> 00:29:46,400
Speaker 2: You explore what happens in the short.

512
00:29:46,160 --> 00:29:50,040
Speaker 1: And long term with the diagnosis of pox with two

513
00:29:50,080 --> 00:29:54,240
Speaker 1: individuals Betty and John, these hypothetical kind of people who

514
00:29:54,280 --> 00:29:58,080
Speaker 1: have a brief sexual encounter at Bartholomew Fair and which

515
00:29:58,120 --> 00:30:00,920
Speaker 1: results in John getting the pox. Can you tell me

516
00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:03,480
Speaker 1: more about Betty and John and how they might have

517
00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:06,440
Speaker 1: found themselves at the fair? What would have happened Immediately after?

518
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:10,360
Speaker 1: I loved this little thought experiment of walking through what

519
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:12,880
Speaker 1: happens to these two people after this.

520
00:30:12,880 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 3: Encounter, I discovered Betty, who is a fictional character from

521
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:20,120
Speaker 3: a ballad. So these are songs that were typically sung

522
00:30:20,720 --> 00:30:23,560
Speaker 3: in taverns like drink basically drinking songs. They were pinned

523
00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:25,720
Speaker 3: up in coffee houses and taverns, and they were set

524
00:30:25,720 --> 00:30:29,840
Speaker 3: to music. And I searched through the ballads to try

525
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:32,120
Speaker 3: to find out how does vineeral disease come up in

526
00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:34,640
Speaker 3: these songs, and I found the story of Betty, who's

527
00:30:34,640 --> 00:30:37,760
Speaker 3: a prostitute who's plying her trade at the Bartholomew Fair,

528
00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:39,800
Speaker 3: which is this annual cloth fair in the north of

529
00:30:39,840 --> 00:30:43,840
Speaker 3: London every August. So I kind of did something that

530
00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:48,040
Speaker 3: is a little controversial among historians, which is I took

531
00:30:48,120 --> 00:30:50,719
Speaker 3: this document and I kind of extrapolated from it and

532
00:30:50,840 --> 00:30:55,040
Speaker 3: made up a story using actual historical sources. So I

533
00:30:55,120 --> 00:30:59,320
Speaker 3: used medical cases and account books and letters to kind

534
00:30:59,320 --> 00:31:01,440
Speaker 3: of piece together what would it have been like to

535
00:31:01,480 --> 00:31:04,560
Speaker 3: be John, this fictional person I made up.

536
00:31:04,840 --> 00:31:05,719
Speaker 2: Well, I didn't make him up.

537
00:31:05,720 --> 00:31:08,560
Speaker 3: He was in the ballad who's infected by a prostitute

538
00:31:08,560 --> 00:31:12,480
Speaker 3: at the fair. So there is a lot of historical

539
00:31:12,600 --> 00:31:14,880
Speaker 3: kind of evidence undergirding what I'm doing, but it is

540
00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:18,600
Speaker 3: a fictional story, and I just, you know, John in

541
00:31:18,640 --> 00:31:21,000
Speaker 3: the ballad is described as this country roof.

542
00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:23,040
Speaker 2: This guy, this young guy is like in the.

543
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:26,080
Speaker 3: Big city for the fair, trying to you know, have

544
00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:28,640
Speaker 3: a couple of fun days where he buys a bunch

545
00:31:28,640 --> 00:31:31,720
Speaker 3: of trinkets to bring home to his family. And the

546
00:31:31,760 --> 00:31:34,120
Speaker 3: thought experiment I do is, first of all, I looked

547
00:31:34,120 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 3: at maps and I tried to figure out like, Okay,

548
00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:37,400
Speaker 3: how would he enter the city? What would he have

549
00:31:37,440 --> 00:31:39,800
Speaker 3: seen and smelled when he came into the city. What

550
00:31:39,840 --> 00:31:41,840
Speaker 3: would it have been like for this guy to show

551
00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:44,760
Speaker 3: up at this fair, which was a pretty chaotic, overwhelming

552
00:31:45,240 --> 00:31:49,080
Speaker 3: place full of stimuli, where he's probably seeing things he's

553
00:31:49,120 --> 00:31:54,960
Speaker 3: never seen before, Venetian women walking on tightropes or playing pipes,

554
00:31:55,120 --> 00:31:57,480
Speaker 3: or rides and.

555
00:31:57,400 --> 00:31:58,920
Speaker 2: Food and smells.

556
00:31:59,200 --> 00:32:01,800
Speaker 3: So I tried to kind of imagine what it would

557
00:32:01,800 --> 00:32:04,080
Speaker 3: have been like to be him, and then also the

558
00:32:04,080 --> 00:32:06,280
Speaker 3: flip side, what it would have been like to be Betty,

559
00:32:06,440 --> 00:32:10,080
Speaker 3: this woman who was probably living in a precarious situation.

560
00:32:10,360 --> 00:32:12,960
Speaker 3: She probably lived in a home with other women who

561
00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:16,000
Speaker 3: were selling their bodies to make ends meet. How she

562
00:32:16,040 --> 00:32:18,680
Speaker 3: would have approached him. They probably went behind a tent.

563
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:21,120
Speaker 3: So I kind of just tried to imagine what it

564
00:32:21,160 --> 00:32:23,360
Speaker 3: would be like to do this, and then the you know,

565
00:32:23,400 --> 00:32:28,400
Speaker 3: the repercussions of it, like John realizing that he was

566
00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:30,959
Speaker 3: infected and that he loses all of his money, right,

567
00:32:31,120 --> 00:32:34,120
Speaker 3: so she picks his pocket as they're doing the deed,

568
00:32:34,320 --> 00:32:37,920
Speaker 3: which comes up again and again in ballads, So and

569
00:32:37,960 --> 00:32:39,840
Speaker 3: then I kind of just imagine, like, Okay, well, what

570
00:32:39,880 --> 00:32:42,160
Speaker 3: symptom would have had first, probably it would have burned

571
00:32:42,200 --> 00:32:44,760
Speaker 3: when he went to the bathroom, and he probably would

572
00:32:44,800 --> 00:32:47,120
Speaker 3: have seen something in his underwear, and what would it

573
00:32:47,120 --> 00:32:49,320
Speaker 3: have looked like? So then I tried to kind of

574
00:32:49,360 --> 00:32:53,360
Speaker 3: look to medical text to piece together what people said

575
00:32:53,360 --> 00:32:55,920
Speaker 3: it looked like, what did your excretions look like? It

576
00:32:55,920 --> 00:32:58,800
Speaker 3: gets pretty grizzly, I.

577
00:32:58,680 --> 00:32:59,240
Speaker 2: Mean it does.

578
00:32:59,520 --> 00:33:02,360
Speaker 1: It was also so fascinating to think of, like how

579
00:33:02,520 --> 00:33:06,880
Speaker 1: much would he have known beforehand about what to look for,

580
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:09,720
Speaker 1: or the questions to ask, or if he would have

581
00:33:09,760 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 1: had to consult like a dear friend to be like, hey, man,

582
00:33:12,760 --> 00:33:15,040
Speaker 1: have you ever seen anything like this? I've got something

583
00:33:15,080 --> 00:33:15,440
Speaker 1: going on.

584
00:33:16,000 --> 00:33:18,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was called the secret disease that

585
00:33:18,240 --> 00:33:21,200
Speaker 3: you meant. You mentioned that name in part because secrets

586
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:25,000
Speaker 3: was slang for genitals, so women's genitals were called.

587
00:33:24,800 --> 00:33:28,080
Speaker 2: Her secrets like privates. Yeah, exactly exactly.

588
00:33:28,320 --> 00:33:30,200
Speaker 3: But it was also called a secret disease because people

589
00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:32,360
Speaker 3: didn't want to talk about it and it was shameful,

590
00:33:32,800 --> 00:33:38,000
Speaker 3: and it was also secretive, like it was the great beguiler.

591
00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:40,760
Speaker 3: Like you, it could be your symptoms could be chalked

592
00:33:40,840 --> 00:33:44,360
Speaker 3: up to completely different disorders. If that's what you wanted.

593
00:33:44,800 --> 00:33:48,560
Speaker 3: So a lot of people did consult their friends and

594
00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:51,120
Speaker 3: kind of ask around and read They're these all these

595
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:53,560
Speaker 3: books that exist at the time that are basically like

596
00:33:53,960 --> 00:33:56,240
Speaker 3: this is how you tell whether or not you're clapped,

597
00:33:56,560 --> 00:33:59,960
Speaker 3: or whether or not you might have a more innocuous

598
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:03,360
Speaker 3: disease like the whites, which is basically a pre modern

599
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:06,440
Speaker 3: yeast infection, but it can look like a clap. So

600
00:34:06,520 --> 00:34:09,960
Speaker 3: there's like medical texts, popular medical books that people would

601
00:34:10,280 --> 00:34:12,839
Speaker 3: probably not very many people could afford to purchase, but

602
00:34:12,920 --> 00:34:15,520
Speaker 3: maybe you would borrow or access or purchase if they

603
00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:18,440
Speaker 3: could afford it to try to parse out these symptoms.

604
00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:20,520
Speaker 3: And there was a whole industry around this question.

605
00:34:21,120 --> 00:34:22,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean absolutely there was.

606
00:34:22,800 --> 00:34:26,839
Speaker 1: And so let's say that you know, John self diagnoses

607
00:34:26,960 --> 00:34:29,480
Speaker 1: or has a friend gives him advice and says, you know,

608
00:34:29,560 --> 00:34:31,600
Speaker 1: I think you I think this is what you've got.

609
00:34:31,640 --> 00:34:34,920
Speaker 1: You've got the poxman. Where does he go next? Like,

610
00:34:35,600 --> 00:34:38,279
Speaker 1: as you said, you've got these these advertisements where you

611
00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:42,560
Speaker 1: can get a clap cure pox treatment all over the city.

612
00:34:43,080 --> 00:34:45,680
Speaker 1: Like where would he see these advertisements? How would that

613
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:48,240
Speaker 1: knowledge get to him? And then how would he find

614
00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:49,920
Speaker 1: the right one for him?

615
00:34:50,480 --> 00:34:53,520
Speaker 3: So if it really depends on how much money you have.

616
00:34:54,520 --> 00:34:57,560
Speaker 3: So if you're very poor, you have nothing, you wouldn't

617
00:34:57,560 --> 00:34:59,239
Speaker 3: be able to buy anything, you wouldn't be able to

618
00:34:59,320 --> 00:35:01,319
Speaker 3: hire somebody, so you would probably go to what was

619
00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:05,560
Speaker 3: called a pox hospital, a pretty punishing, unpleasant place. We

620
00:35:05,680 --> 00:35:08,520
Speaker 3: know a lot about pox hospitals because hospitals have a

621
00:35:08,520 --> 00:35:11,600
Speaker 3: lot of records, so we have like pretty amazing histories

622
00:35:11,640 --> 00:35:14,960
Speaker 3: about these institutions. And then if you're really well off,

623
00:35:15,040 --> 00:35:18,640
Speaker 3: you would probably hire somebody. You would probably hire a

624
00:35:18,680 --> 00:35:22,200
Speaker 3: surgeon or a healer, or just like someone random without

625
00:35:22,200 --> 00:35:25,239
Speaker 3: any credentials who claims they can heal this disease. You

626
00:35:25,360 --> 00:35:28,279
Speaker 3: might move into their house, maybe because you want to

627
00:35:28,360 --> 00:35:32,640
Speaker 3: undergo a lengthy treatment that causes a lot of conspicuous

628
00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:36,239
Speaker 3: side effects sweating, spitting, and you don't want to do

629
00:35:36,280 --> 00:35:38,760
Speaker 3: that in public, so you might move into their home.

630
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:41,640
Speaker 3: Maybe they have a sweat bath, a bathing house you

631
00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:45,640
Speaker 3: can use, or and this person would tailor customize their

632
00:35:45,680 --> 00:35:49,279
Speaker 3: treatment plan just for you, just for your bodily constitution,

633
00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:50,800
Speaker 3: your situation, your symptoms.

634
00:35:50,840 --> 00:35:52,000
Speaker 2: That would be very expensive.

635
00:35:52,520 --> 00:35:55,759
Speaker 3: So then there's everybody else, And I decided John was

636
00:35:55,760 --> 00:35:58,000
Speaker 3: in the everybody else category. He's new to the city.

637
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:00,520
Speaker 3: He probably doesn't have a lot of money. Well, he

638
00:36:00,560 --> 00:36:03,319
Speaker 3: has no money because she picked his pockets, so he

639
00:36:03,640 --> 00:36:05,600
Speaker 3: is kind of lumped in with everyone else, which is

640
00:36:05,640 --> 00:36:08,160
Speaker 3: the kind of the population I was trying to recover.

641
00:36:08,239 --> 00:36:10,560
Speaker 3: We know the most about those two ends, the very

642
00:36:10,560 --> 00:36:12,560
Speaker 3: poor and the very well off, because that's where they're

643
00:36:12,600 --> 00:36:17,160
Speaker 3: the most sources. But everybody else would probably go to

644
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 3: the bookstall, lining the Royal Exchange, or the apothecary shop,

645
00:36:21,719 --> 00:36:24,439
Speaker 3: or the chocolate shop or wherever to try to get

646
00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:25,080
Speaker 3: one of these.

647
00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:26,000
Speaker 2: Over the counter cures.

648
00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:31,200
Speaker 3: They're cheaper, they're more accessible, they're quicker, they're not as conspicuous,

649
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:35,520
Speaker 3: and they're just more accessible. And the chaos of the

650
00:36:35,560 --> 00:36:39,319
Speaker 3: city can make the shame of the shopping experience not

651
00:36:39,400 --> 00:36:43,040
Speaker 3: as big of a problem. And then there's people John

652
00:36:43,040 --> 00:36:45,359
Speaker 3: wouldn't fit into this category. Then they're the people who

653
00:36:45,360 --> 00:36:47,680
Speaker 3: would make their own cures at home, who would need

654
00:36:47,719 --> 00:36:52,200
Speaker 3: to have not just the resources to do that, but

655
00:36:52,239 --> 00:36:55,640
Speaker 3: the know how to do that, and it's complicated work.

656
00:36:56,200 --> 00:36:58,879
Speaker 1: I want to talk more about these clap cures. These

657
00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:05,120
Speaker 1: people who found themselves producing and selling these treatments. How

658
00:37:05,120 --> 00:37:08,719
Speaker 1: did they find themselves designing and selling these treatments.

659
00:37:09,520 --> 00:37:12,359
Speaker 3: Some of them say their secret recipes passed down from

660
00:37:12,400 --> 00:37:14,920
Speaker 3: my grandfather, you know, they claim to have some sort

661
00:37:14,960 --> 00:37:18,080
Speaker 3: of lineage. Others who are new to the city, because

662
00:37:18,120 --> 00:37:20,080
Speaker 3: remember this is the time where there's just this huge

663
00:37:20,080 --> 00:37:22,680
Speaker 3: influx of immigrants to the city to make money. This

664
00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:26,160
Speaker 3: is a really growing urban area, claim oh, I learned

665
00:37:26,200 --> 00:37:29,000
Speaker 3: this on an Italian warship, or I learned this from

666
00:37:29,239 --> 00:37:33,760
Speaker 3: treating the Turkish emperor's brother. So they kind of claim

667
00:37:33,920 --> 00:37:37,560
Speaker 3: to have foreign knowledge, exotic foreign knowledge. So they're all

668
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:41,840
Speaker 3: different ways people claim they get the knowledge to produce

669
00:37:41,880 --> 00:37:44,240
Speaker 3: these things. At the end of the day, it seems

670
00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:47,640
Speaker 3: like a lot of people were just making more or

671
00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:51,200
Speaker 3: less the same stuff. Like I don't know what was

672
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:53,560
Speaker 3: in a lot of them because they don't say they're secretive.

673
00:37:53,920 --> 00:37:58,000
Speaker 3: I don't know how different the different pills and tinctures

674
00:37:58,040 --> 00:38:00,279
Speaker 3: that were being sold really were. But I do know

675
00:38:00,800 --> 00:38:03,279
Speaker 3: from looking at what's what we do know about how

676
00:38:03,320 --> 00:38:03,799
Speaker 3: they were made.

677
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:04,640
Speaker 2: They were horrifying.

678
00:38:04,760 --> 00:38:06,920
Speaker 3: A lot of them had turpentine in them. A lot

679
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:10,760
Speaker 3: of them had mercury, which would cause that prodigious sweating.

680
00:38:11,360 --> 00:38:14,440
Speaker 3: It would cause mercury poisoning. Right, would we know to

681
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:16,520
Speaker 3: be mercury poisoning. You would make your teeth fall out

682
00:38:17,040 --> 00:38:21,360
Speaker 3: if you ingested it. You know, makes you spit a lot.

683
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:24,239
Speaker 3: So there's one person who said they spit. They salivated

684
00:38:24,280 --> 00:38:27,759
Speaker 3: five pints a day if you and then it would

685
00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:29,400
Speaker 3: also be used as an ointment as a solve, and

686
00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:30,759
Speaker 3: you would rub it on your body and it would

687
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:33,880
Speaker 3: make you sweat. And the idea was this was logical

688
00:38:33,920 --> 00:38:37,239
Speaker 3: within the day. The idea was, Oh, if you have

689
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:40,640
Speaker 3: stuff coming out, that's the poison, that's the venom coming out.

690
00:38:40,640 --> 00:38:42,400
Speaker 2: That's good, that's healthful, this is good.

691
00:38:43,120 --> 00:38:45,080
Speaker 3: So you know, we see it and we think that's

692
00:38:45,280 --> 00:38:48,960
Speaker 3: a terrible idea, do not eat mercury and turpentine. But

693
00:38:49,040 --> 00:38:51,640
Speaker 3: they had a really different medical logic.

694
00:38:51,680 --> 00:38:54,200
Speaker 1: To show that, hey, this is doing something to you,

695
00:38:54,239 --> 00:38:55,600
Speaker 1: therefore it must be doing the.

696
00:38:55,600 --> 00:38:57,680
Speaker 3: Right thing to exactly exactly.

697
00:38:58,360 --> 00:39:02,200
Speaker 1: Thinking about the number of advertisements that you found and

698
00:39:02,719 --> 00:39:05,000
Speaker 1: this map that this beautiful map that you made, I

699
00:39:05,080 --> 00:39:06,600
Speaker 1: just love it so much. I think it also just

700
00:39:06,640 --> 00:39:08,880
Speaker 1: shows that it was a kind of a good business

701
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:12,440
Speaker 1: model to go into this. At twenty percent of a

702
00:39:12,480 --> 00:39:16,000
Speaker 1: lifetime risk of developing venereal disease, that means a lot

703
00:39:16,040 --> 00:39:17,520
Speaker 1: of cures are going to be sold.

704
00:39:18,440 --> 00:39:20,759
Speaker 2: Yes, and I think that, you know, we know this

705
00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:21,440
Speaker 2: to be true.

706
00:39:21,520 --> 00:39:23,160
Speaker 3: Like a lot of people had this disease and a

707
00:39:23,160 --> 00:39:25,239
Speaker 3: lot of people got in on the game to treat

708
00:39:25,280 --> 00:39:27,319
Speaker 3: it because you could make money doing it. It was

709
00:39:27,760 --> 00:39:30,000
Speaker 3: and a lot of the ways these guys who were

710
00:39:30,040 --> 00:39:32,120
Speaker 3: selling these cures were trying to kind of compete with

711
00:39:32,160 --> 00:39:34,240
Speaker 3: each other is they would accuse each other of greed,

712
00:39:34,280 --> 00:39:36,880
Speaker 3: of doing exactly what you're saying, just Oh, you're just

713
00:39:36,920 --> 00:39:39,480
Speaker 3: a cobbler. You don't have a medical background, you don't

714
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:41,320
Speaker 3: have a secret tincture that was passed down to you

715
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:44,919
Speaker 3: from your grandfather like me. You're just like a tinker

716
00:39:45,200 --> 00:39:47,160
Speaker 3: who's trying to get in on the game. So they

717
00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:50,680
Speaker 3: knew that, and they use that as you know, a

718
00:39:50,719 --> 00:39:52,160
Speaker 3: way of kind of fighting with each other.

719
00:39:52,560 --> 00:39:55,120
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I mean competition must have been quite stifferent,

720
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:57,680
Speaker 1: and with so many different people out there, you had

721
00:39:57,680 --> 00:40:00,480
Speaker 1: to stand out in some way or another. But then

722
00:40:00,520 --> 00:40:02,360
Speaker 1: there was also, as you said, this flip side of

723
00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:05,920
Speaker 1: people who were making home remedies based off of recipes.

724
00:40:06,520 --> 00:40:09,040
Speaker 1: What do these recipes look like not in terms of

725
00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:12,120
Speaker 1: like what ingredients were there, but where were they found,

726
00:40:12,200 --> 00:40:15,360
Speaker 1: what types of books or were they just scraps of paper?

727
00:40:15,520 --> 00:40:17,760
Speaker 1: How would someone come across this knowledge.

728
00:40:18,200 --> 00:40:21,120
Speaker 3: These were found in what were called recipe books, and

729
00:40:21,560 --> 00:40:24,160
Speaker 3: we think of cooking recipes when you use the word recipe,

730
00:40:24,200 --> 00:40:28,439
Speaker 3: but these recipe books would usually be combinations of cookery, medicine,

731
00:40:28,480 --> 00:40:32,120
Speaker 3: and cosmetics. Sometimes they would be organized, sometimes they'd be

732
00:40:32,120 --> 00:40:33,759
Speaker 3: all one of those three categories.

733
00:40:33,880 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 2: Sometimes they would be a mix.

734
00:40:35,600 --> 00:40:40,560
Speaker 3: And they were basically very practical how to guides, and

735
00:40:40,600 --> 00:40:44,719
Speaker 3: they'd be organized. Sometimes they'd be indexed. So these were

736
00:40:44,719 --> 00:40:47,920
Speaker 3: incredibly valuable books. There were collections of domestic knowledge of

737
00:40:48,480 --> 00:40:52,879
Speaker 3: non learned, everyday household medical knowledge, and cookery and cosmetics,

738
00:40:53,320 --> 00:40:54,399
Speaker 3: and they were passed down.

739
00:40:54,480 --> 00:40:57,439
Speaker 2: They were valued possessions. They were often bequeathed to kin

740
00:40:57,680 --> 00:40:58,759
Speaker 2: and you can see.

741
00:40:58,520 --> 00:41:02,000
Speaker 3: In the handwriting of them the layers of people who

742
00:41:03,120 --> 00:41:06,080
Speaker 3: passed down these documents and amended them. You can see

743
00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:08,799
Speaker 3: the handwriting change, or people write in the margin, this

744
00:41:08,880 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 3: didn't work, or I tried this, or changing the quantities

745
00:41:12,640 --> 00:41:14,600
Speaker 3: or the ingredients, so you can kind of see it

746
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:19,440
Speaker 3: in the handwriting and the crossing outs over time. Oftentimes

747
00:41:19,480 --> 00:41:21,320
Speaker 3: we don't know who wrote them or who the original

748
00:41:21,320 --> 00:41:24,440
Speaker 3: compiler is, so it can be a little confusing, but

749
00:41:24,520 --> 00:41:27,719
Speaker 3: there are tons of these that exist in archives, and

750
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:30,920
Speaker 3: I just started going through them and looking for Okay,

751
00:41:31,120 --> 00:41:35,280
Speaker 3: we're people treating themselves at home for this really stigmatizing disease.

752
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:39,279
Speaker 3: Do we see recipes? And we do, there are lots

753
00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:39,600
Speaker 3: of them.

754
00:41:40,400 --> 00:41:42,439
Speaker 1: You touched a bit on this in terms of who

755
00:41:42,480 --> 00:41:46,040
Speaker 1: would be able to go out and buy a cure

756
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:49,879
Speaker 1: versus treat at home, but who did have the resources

757
00:41:49,920 --> 00:41:52,040
Speaker 1: and then know how who had these access to these

758
00:41:52,080 --> 00:41:55,440
Speaker 1: recipe books to make these at home remedies.

759
00:41:56,440 --> 00:41:58,560
Speaker 3: What I love about recipe books is it's one of

760
00:41:58,560 --> 00:42:00,880
Speaker 3: the places, at least in the history of medicine in

761
00:42:00,920 --> 00:42:03,279
Speaker 3: the pre modern era, where we see a lot of

762
00:42:03,320 --> 00:42:07,839
Speaker 3: women writing. So it's harder to find a lot of

763
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:11,520
Speaker 3: women practitioners. We know there were a lot of female practitioners,

764
00:42:11,520 --> 00:42:14,360
Speaker 3: but they didn't keep case books in the great numbers

765
00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:17,200
Speaker 3: the same way men male practitioners did, so it's just

766
00:42:17,280 --> 00:42:22,680
Speaker 3: harder to find historical evidence of female practitioners writing things down.

767
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:25,719
Speaker 3: Recipe books are one of these places where there's just

768
00:42:25,840 --> 00:42:28,400
Speaker 3: a lot written by women. There's a lot of recipes

769
00:42:28,400 --> 00:42:31,120
Speaker 3: by men too. It's not an all female genre by

770
00:42:31,160 --> 00:42:34,480
Speaker 3: any means, but we get more women writing about medical

771
00:42:34,560 --> 00:42:37,560
Speaker 3: practice than we get otherwise, and a lot of these

772
00:42:37,600 --> 00:42:40,160
Speaker 3: women A you need to be literate, so that means

773
00:42:40,920 --> 00:42:44,640
Speaker 3: it's by default the highest levels of society. Right, if

774
00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:47,200
Speaker 3: you're impoverished, if you're barely making ends meet, if you're

775
00:42:47,239 --> 00:42:49,480
Speaker 3: Betty at the fair selling sex, you're not going to

776
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:51,880
Speaker 3: probably have a recipe book or keep a recipe book.

777
00:42:52,120 --> 00:42:55,120
Speaker 3: So these are pretty middling to upper status women who

778
00:42:55,239 --> 00:42:58,440
Speaker 3: have the time and the literacy skills and the resources

779
00:42:58,480 --> 00:43:01,520
Speaker 3: because to make these recipes, they are not They are

780
00:43:01,560 --> 00:43:05,480
Speaker 3: no joke. They are complicated and very technical and in

781
00:43:05,520 --> 00:43:07,960
Speaker 3: many ways not that different from what you would buy

782
00:43:08,080 --> 00:43:10,200
Speaker 3: at the bookshop or what you would get if you

783
00:43:10,280 --> 00:43:13,040
Speaker 3: hired a healer and lived at his house for three weeks.

784
00:43:13,600 --> 00:43:19,200
Speaker 3: They require sometimes equipment, glassware, cookware, and this was a

785
00:43:19,200 --> 00:43:21,440
Speaker 3: time when people didn't have a lot of stuff, so

786
00:43:22,200 --> 00:43:24,200
Speaker 3: it wasn't nothing. And then you had to source all

787
00:43:24,239 --> 00:43:27,239
Speaker 3: the ingredients, which could be hard to get. So I

788
00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 3: think we in our minds think, oh, well, surely you

789
00:43:29,080 --> 00:43:31,600
Speaker 3: grow them in you're a garden, And yes, you could

790
00:43:31,680 --> 00:43:33,960
Speaker 3: grow if you had a garden, right we're talking about

791
00:43:34,040 --> 00:43:35,960
Speaker 3: urban London. But if you did have a garden. You

792
00:43:35,960 --> 00:43:38,200
Speaker 3: could probably grow a lot of these things that you

793
00:43:38,239 --> 00:43:40,400
Speaker 3: needed for these recipes, but you also probably had to

794
00:43:40,440 --> 00:43:43,719
Speaker 3: go out into the city and source some pretty hard

795
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:47,600
Speaker 3: to get ingredients. Some of them required amber grease from whales,

796
00:43:47,719 --> 00:43:51,400
Speaker 3: some required gold dust, So this was not just something

797
00:43:51,480 --> 00:43:53,480
Speaker 3: any old person could do.

798
00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:57,920
Speaker 1: A lot of this diagnosis, it seems to be self diagnosed.

799
00:43:58,200 --> 00:44:02,280
Speaker 1: People were recognize symptoms in themselves and then saying, Okay,

800
00:44:02,320 --> 00:44:03,759
Speaker 1: I think I have this, I'm going to go find

801
00:44:03,760 --> 00:44:07,000
Speaker 1: treatment myself. But then there were some people who consulted

802
00:44:07,120 --> 00:44:10,440
Speaker 1: or who had accessed or were able to consult a physician,

803
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:14,520
Speaker 1: and it was very striking and not surprising necessarily, I think,

804
00:44:14,600 --> 00:44:17,719
Speaker 1: given the time, But like how physicians almost seem to

805
00:44:17,719 --> 00:44:20,960
Speaker 1: operate on the basis of assuming that their patient was

806
00:44:21,040 --> 00:44:23,840
Speaker 1: lying about what was going on. Can you tell me

807
00:44:23,880 --> 00:44:25,960
Speaker 1: more about what that experience would be like from a

808
00:44:25,960 --> 00:44:29,480
Speaker 1: patient perspective, who goes and consults with a doctor about

809
00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:33,680
Speaker 1: symptoms of venereal disease that they're not sure what they are.

810
00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:36,560
Speaker 3: It's hard to say what was going on in patient's

811
00:44:36,640 --> 00:44:38,839
Speaker 3: minds because of course, we only have the writing from

812
00:44:38,840 --> 00:44:41,120
Speaker 3: the other side, right, We only have the practitioners writing.

813
00:44:41,160 --> 00:44:43,680
Speaker 3: So it's a fun thought experiment, and my guess is

814
00:44:43,680 --> 00:44:47,000
Speaker 3: that often they legitimately didn't know what they had, and

815
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:49,439
Speaker 3: I think more often they did know, and they were

816
00:44:49,480 --> 00:44:52,000
Speaker 3: trying to get and I don't want to say they

817
00:44:52,000 --> 00:44:54,880
Speaker 3: were lying, but they were trying to get the most

818
00:44:54,880 --> 00:44:57,839
Speaker 3: out of the situation. And that could be to try

819
00:44:57,880 --> 00:44:59,960
Speaker 3: to save face, or to save their reputation or say

820
00:45:00,080 --> 00:45:03,320
Speaker 3: of their marriage or whatever. That could be just trying

821
00:45:03,320 --> 00:45:06,600
Speaker 3: to get the treatment they thought they needed without the diagnosis.

822
00:45:06,600 --> 00:45:08,719
Speaker 3: So you see this time and again of them of

823
00:45:08,840 --> 00:45:10,160
Speaker 3: patients trying to kind of.

824
00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:11,200
Speaker 2: Get a scurvy.

825
00:45:11,280 --> 00:45:13,200
Speaker 3: It was usually scurvy because there was something about the

826
00:45:13,200 --> 00:45:17,080
Speaker 3: symptoms that one could really easily be replaced by the other.

827
00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:21,000
Speaker 3: Get the diagnosis that's innocuous, that doesn't have the shame,

828
00:45:21,120 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 3: doesn't have the stigma, but that comes with the treatment

829
00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:26,000
Speaker 3: that does the work of treating this. Because they're treating symptoms,

830
00:45:26,040 --> 00:45:29,799
Speaker 3: right this is before the treatment of actual disease. So

831
00:45:30,400 --> 00:45:34,360
Speaker 3: I think there is a little bit of truth to

832
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:36,720
Speaker 3: this sense that you get from reading the case books

833
00:45:36,719 --> 00:45:40,360
Speaker 3: by practitioners that there is a little unreliability from the patients.

834
00:45:41,000 --> 00:45:43,920
Speaker 3: But we can never know because it's all through the

835
00:45:43,920 --> 00:45:47,520
Speaker 3: eyes of these practitioners who are very keen to make

836
00:45:47,560 --> 00:45:48,680
Speaker 3: themselves look good.

837
00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:51,520
Speaker 1: Right, which is then part of that is like, well,

838
00:45:52,040 --> 00:45:54,799
Speaker 1: I am an excellent doctor because I saw past the

839
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:59,760
Speaker 1: patient's lies and their efforts to conceal exactly. We've touched

840
00:45:59,760 --> 00:46:03,319
Speaker 1: on this a little bit throughout, and I want to

841
00:46:03,400 --> 00:46:07,040
Speaker 1: end just by kind of asking more about these parallels

842
00:46:07,040 --> 00:46:10,160
Speaker 1: that you have seen throughout researching for this, throughout your experience,

843
00:46:10,239 --> 00:46:13,239
Speaker 1: you know, in this in this early modern London, what

844
00:46:13,280 --> 00:46:18,680
Speaker 1: parallels you see between veneer disease then and disease now,

845
00:46:18,840 --> 00:46:21,360
Speaker 1: or just medicine then and medicine now, and some of

846
00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:24,760
Speaker 1: the things that you observed throughout this process.

847
00:46:25,480 --> 00:46:28,000
Speaker 3: I think we already talked about the market forces, you

848
00:46:28,000 --> 00:46:31,000
Speaker 3: know that this kind of early version of the capitalization

849
00:46:31,040 --> 00:46:35,319
Speaker 3: of medicine. I think the biggest parallel I found. You know,

850
00:46:35,360 --> 00:46:38,000
Speaker 3: I was writing this during COVID, most of it during

851
00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:40,880
Speaker 3: the COVID times when it was pretty bleak, and I

852
00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:44,040
Speaker 3: just kept thinking about stigma and shame. And I know,

853
00:46:44,239 --> 00:46:46,520
Speaker 3: you know, COVID's not an STI It's really different, but

854
00:46:46,560 --> 00:46:47,440
Speaker 3: there was stigma.

855
00:46:47,560 --> 00:46:48,759
Speaker 2: There was this kind of.

856
00:46:48,719 --> 00:46:51,560
Speaker 3: Like, well, were you wearing a mask, did you did

857
00:46:51,560 --> 00:46:53,680
Speaker 3: you take a pc R? You know, like there were

858
00:46:53,880 --> 00:46:57,759
Speaker 3: kind of assumptions people had about proper behavior, and so

859
00:46:57,880 --> 00:47:00,279
Speaker 3: I did spend a lot of time thinking about, like

860
00:47:00,760 --> 00:47:03,600
Speaker 3: how do we blame people for diagnoses, and like what

861
00:47:03,640 --> 00:47:06,359
Speaker 3: does it mean to have to get that positive test

862
00:47:06,440 --> 00:47:08,760
Speaker 3: back and think like, oh, man, I should have done

863
00:47:08,880 --> 00:47:10,600
Speaker 3: this differently, or it was my fault.

864
00:47:10,640 --> 00:47:11,919
Speaker 2: I didn't do the right thing.

865
00:47:12,560 --> 00:47:15,239
Speaker 3: So I think I make a lot of connections to

866
00:47:15,400 --> 00:47:17,680
Speaker 3: HIV in the in the book, I think because it's

867
00:47:17,719 --> 00:47:21,160
Speaker 3: just the most obvious parallel for me thinking historically about

868
00:47:21,440 --> 00:47:26,839
Speaker 3: STIs and shame and silencing and how shameful diseases silence suffers.

869
00:47:26,920 --> 00:47:29,960
Speaker 3: You know, the famous activism of the aid's movement in

870
00:47:30,000 --> 00:47:33,799
Speaker 3: the eighties was silence equals death. And I don't want to,

871
00:47:34,120 --> 00:47:37,400
Speaker 3: you know, glibly compare the pox in the seventeen hundreds

872
00:47:37,440 --> 00:47:41,360
Speaker 3: and sixteen hundreds to HIV, because there's immense differences. But

873
00:47:41,520 --> 00:47:44,719
Speaker 3: I think that role of shame in silencing us and

874
00:47:44,760 --> 00:47:48,520
Speaker 3: the work of recovering everyday lives of like how we

875
00:47:48,640 --> 00:47:53,000
Speaker 3: cope with shameful diseases is a transhistorical truth something that

876
00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:57,000
Speaker 3: you know, I'm reading these people's letters suffering from these

877
00:47:57,000 --> 00:47:59,160
Speaker 3: diagnoses and how am I going to you know, tell

878
00:47:59,200 --> 00:48:01,720
Speaker 3: my family, what am I going to do? And hiding

879
00:48:01,760 --> 00:48:04,920
Speaker 3: in the spa town to get treated in secret, And

880
00:48:05,280 --> 00:48:09,200
Speaker 3: it does feel like there are these kinds of connections

881
00:48:09,239 --> 00:48:12,160
Speaker 3: to that kind of suffering, that shamefulness and silencing that

882
00:48:12,200 --> 00:48:15,839
Speaker 3: we see in nineteen eighties New York or today. There

883
00:48:15,840 --> 00:48:19,120
Speaker 3: are many parallels that I that I saw doing this work.

884
00:48:19,640 --> 00:48:23,040
Speaker 3: And I think that's the cool thing about studying this

885
00:48:23,120 --> 00:48:27,279
Speaker 3: time period is it's so different from ours, it's so unfamiliar,

886
00:48:27,320 --> 00:48:32,080
Speaker 3: and yet there are these parallels that kind of shine through,

887
00:48:32,680 --> 00:48:35,280
Speaker 3: and it gives us kind of the clarity for thinking

888
00:48:35,280 --> 00:48:36,480
Speaker 3: about the world we live in.

889
00:48:37,080 --> 00:48:40,000
Speaker 1: Some things being timeless in some ways, and the shame

890
00:48:40,200 --> 00:48:43,080
Speaker 1: of disease regardless of the type. But you know, I

891
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:45,359
Speaker 1: know that some disease carries with it more shame than others.

892
00:48:45,440 --> 00:48:49,040
Speaker 1: But I just want to thank you so much for

893
00:48:49,120 --> 00:48:51,799
Speaker 1: such a fascinating book, such a wonderful conversation. It has

894
00:48:51,880 --> 00:48:54,360
Speaker 1: been so enlightening to chat with you and get more

895
00:48:54,440 --> 00:48:56,880
Speaker 1: into the nitty gritty of venereal disease.

896
00:48:57,160 --> 00:49:00,359
Speaker 2: So thank you, Thank you so much. I appreciate this.

897
00:49:00,360 --> 00:49:01,520
Speaker 2: This is really fun.

898
00:49:20,200 --> 00:49:23,000
Speaker 1: A big thank you again to doctor Olivia Wiser for

899
00:49:23,080 --> 00:49:25,920
Speaker 1: taking the time to chat with me. If you enjoyed

900
00:49:25,920 --> 00:49:28,719
Speaker 1: today's episode and would like to learn more, check out

901
00:49:28,800 --> 00:49:32,000
Speaker 1: our website this podcast will kill You dot com. We're

902
00:49:32,040 --> 00:49:34,279
Speaker 1: I'll post a link to where you can find the

903
00:49:34,360 --> 00:49:38,319
Speaker 1: dreaded pos Sex and Disease in Early modern London, as

904
00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:40,759
Speaker 1: well as a link to doctor Wiser's website where you

905
00:49:40,800 --> 00:49:44,239
Speaker 1: can find her other incredible work. And don't forget you

906
00:49:44,239 --> 00:49:46,879
Speaker 1: can check out our website for all sorts of other

907
00:49:46,960 --> 00:49:52,399
Speaker 1: cool things, including but not limited to, transcripts, quarantine recipes,

908
00:49:52,600 --> 00:49:56,280
Speaker 1: show notes and references for all of our episodes, links

909
00:49:56,280 --> 00:50:00,000
Speaker 1: to merch our bookshop dot org affiliate page, our goodreadsless

910
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:01,840
Speaker 1: a first hand account.

911
00:50:01,480 --> 00:50:03,640
Speaker 2: Form and music by Bloodmobile.

912
00:50:04,160 --> 00:50:07,200
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the

913
00:50:07,280 --> 00:50:11,040
Speaker 1: music for this episode and all of our episodes. Thank

914
00:50:11,080 --> 00:50:13,120
Speaker 1: you to Leanna Scuialatchi and Tom.

915
00:50:12,920 --> 00:50:15,440
Speaker 2: Bray Foegel for our excellent audio mixing.

916
00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:18,840
Speaker 1: And thanks to you listeners for listening. I hope you

917
00:50:18,960 --> 00:50:22,080
Speaker 1: liked this episode and our loving being part of the

918
00:50:22,160 --> 00:50:26,839
Speaker 1: TPWKY book Club. A special thank you, as always to

919
00:50:26,960 --> 00:50:28,440
Speaker 1: our fantastic patrons.

920
00:50:29,080 --> 00:50:30,520
Speaker 2: Your support means everything.

921
00:50:31,239 --> 00:51:01,440
Speaker 1: Until next time, Keep washing those hands