WEBVTT - Special Episode: Dr. Olivia Weisser & The Dreaded Pox 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:47.400 Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh and this is this Podcast will 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:51.760 Kill You. Welcome to the tp w k Y book Club, 0:00:52.159 --> 0:00:55.800 a series where I invite authors of popular science and 0:00:55.880 --> 0:00:58.840 medicine books to the show to chat with me about 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:02.520 their latest work. It's been such a fun series to 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:07.000 put together, really making my inner bookworm so happy, and 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:10.679 we've covered some great topics over the years. If you'd 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:13.320 like to see what we've featured in the past, or 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:15.320 get a peek at some of the books that we're 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:18.200 planning to feature in the future, head on over to 0:01:18.280 --> 0:01:21.959 our website This Podcast will Kill You dot Com. 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Plague, tuberculosis, typhus, measles, 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:43.560 and smallpox all reared their pestilential heads at some point 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:48.040 or another. But alongside these well known and highly broadcast 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:53.400 afflictions lurked another disease so feared and so stigmatized that 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:57.440 it was sometimes known as the secret disease we know 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:01.600 it today as syphilis. Syphilis, or the pox, as it 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:05.520 was also called, was among the most feared diagnoses in 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:09.399 early modern London, not just because there were no effective 0:03:09.440 --> 0:03:12.919 cures and it could lead to painful sores or even death. 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:17.120 If your pox infection became public knowledge, you would likely 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:21.520 face deep stigma and shame. You may even be ostracized 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:24.600 from your friends and family. With so much at stake, 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:28.200 it's no wonder people went to great lengths to manage 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:32.600 or conceal their condition. In The Dreaded Pox, Sex and 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:37.320 Disease and Early Modern London, author doctor Olivia Wiser, Associate 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:42.080 professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, peels 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:45.480 back the curtain on the most intimate facets of londoner's 0:03:45.520 --> 0:03:49.960 lives centuries ago. Drawing from a wide variety of sources, 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:55.920 from court records to recipe books, poscure advertisements to personal diaries, 0:03:56.400 --> 0:04:00.160 doctor Wiser transports readers back in time to the dirty 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:04.400 streets of London. Where might an impoverished maids seek help 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:08.120 for her infection? How might a gentleman choose between the 0:04:08.200 --> 0:04:11.960 many ready made concoctions in the city's alleys, who were 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:16.320 behind these lauded tinctures and ointments that provided nothing more 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:20.279 than hope. The Dreaded Pox is a fascinating glimpse into 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:23.760 the daily lives of early modern Londoners as they navigated 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:27.560 a world where sex and shame were so deeply entangled. 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:31.520 While today we have more scientific knowledge and the ability 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:35.760 to treat and cure many sexually transmitted infections. That world 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:39.479 is still familiar to us in many ways, which leads 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:43.080 us to ask how far we have actually come and 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:46.599 how much further we still need to go. I had 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:49.400 such a great time chatting with doctor Wiser, and I'm 0:04:49.640 --> 0:04:53.080 so excited to share our conversation with you all. So 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:56.040 let's just take a quick break and get right into it. 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:23.120 Doctor Wiser, thank you so much for joining me today. 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:24.279 Thanks for having me. 0:05:24.920 --> 0:05:28.520 I cannot wait to dive into the world of venereal 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:31.960 disease in the London of past centuries with you. It's 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:34.360 going to be a great time. And I'm curious, though, 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:37.279 could you tell me what drew you to this area 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:39.040 and this era of scholarship. 0:05:39.960 --> 0:05:42.479 A lot of people know that there was a ton 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:45.640 of venereal disease in this time period. So this was 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:49.880 a rampant disease, and we know a lot about the 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:53.640 disease because just so many people seem to be affected 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:56.800 by it. There's some historians who predict that if you 0:05:56.839 --> 0:05:59.560 were a grown up living in London in the seventeen hundreds, 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:01.680 you would have up to a twenty percent chance of 0:06:01.720 --> 0:06:04.800 getting infected, which is an astounding number. 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:07.400 I don't know whether that's true. 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:11.719 I trust them, but it's just appalling, like how prevalent 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:15.760 this disease was. So we know a lot about the disease, 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:17.200 we know a lot less about what it was like 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:18.560 to live with it. So that was kind of the 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:22.720 historical problem that I faced. What was it like to 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:24.720 endure this disease? What was it like just for a 0:06:24.760 --> 0:06:26.360 normal person living in the city. 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:28.880 And so the answer to kind of. 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:33.799 Do that work, I tried to look in non medical places, 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:37.719 So I tried to look outside hospitals, outside, I did 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:40.039 look in consultation rooms, but I tried to look in 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:43.440 everyday sites in the city to try to recover just 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:45.960 lived experiences with this disease. 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:48.839 And what I ended up writing was a book. 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:50.800 That's as much about the history of a city as 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:52.040 it is about the history. 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:54.480 Of a disease, which is what I love so much 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:54.880 about it. 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:58.840 You really transport readers to this era before germ theory, 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:02.280 where London is growing at such a rapid pace and 0:07:02.440 --> 0:07:05.279 sex is changing. You know, all of these different components 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:08.120 are changing, but also at the same time we have 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:12.400 these sentiments of shame and secrecy that surround not only sex, 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:14.720 but and then of course anything that's tied to sex, 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:18.640 including this disease. And you know we talked about we've 0:07:18.680 --> 0:07:21.360 been talking about this disease. Is what is pox like? 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:25.720 What what could pox be used to describe or label 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:28.600 in terms of our modern classifications of disease. 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:31.600 It's a great question and one that I get a lot. 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:35.640 And my easy answer, if it's really helpful to have 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:38.720 some sort of modern disease equivalent in your head thinking 0:07:38.720 --> 0:07:42.480 about this topic, My easy answer is syphilis. It's most 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:45.840 likely that's the disease we're talking about. The more kind 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:48.800 of historically accurate answer is it could be any number 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:52.440 of STIs what we would call STIs, So you know, 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:56.120 you think chlamydia, gottar rhea, syphilis, it could. 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:56.800 Be any of those. 0:07:56.920 --> 0:08:01.560 And they used this term venereal disease, this umbrella category 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:04.920 that was expansive, so all of these what we now 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:08.800 differentiate as different astis were kind of all encompassed within 0:08:08.920 --> 0:08:12.400 that one term. They in the past pre germ theory, 0:08:12.480 --> 0:08:15.760 like you mentioned, they didn't differentiate these categories the way 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:18.320 we do. But it can be helpful to kind of 0:08:18.400 --> 0:08:20.280 have that in your mind to just think about, like 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:23.840 what was happening to these people's bodies, you know, like 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:26.360 were they what were their symptoms, what were they enduring? 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:30.400 You talked about how pos was or venereal disease was 0:08:30.480 --> 0:08:33.240 so common in this era. I mean you like twenty 0:08:33.280 --> 0:08:38.480 percent possible lifetime risk, which is mind blowing. Again, why 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:39.640 was it so high? 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:40.000 Like what? 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:44.400 How was sex changing in London during the seventeenth and 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:45.360 eighteenth centuries. 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:49.199 A lot of historians of sexuality have argued that sex 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:51.800 was changing a lot that people have used the word. 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:53.840 Revolution like a sexual revolution. 0:08:53.520 --> 0:08:55.280 In this time period, and there is a lot of 0:08:55.280 --> 0:08:57.960 evidence that sex was changing, that people were just having 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:01.760 more sex outside of marriage. There was many there's much 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:04.920 more evidence of men having sex with other men, the 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:07.840 development of what we're called molly houses, like kind of 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:11.640 like the proto gay club, and so there is evidence 0:09:11.679 --> 0:09:15.319 that there's just more sexual activity. 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:18.880 In this time period. My sense from writing this book. 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:22.320 Is and a lot of what I see changing is 0:09:22.400 --> 0:09:25.120 more due to the changes of the city as opposed 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.240 to changes in sexual behavior that the city. Because it's 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:30.360 such a London specific story and I think it would 0:09:30.400 --> 0:09:32.440 be a very different book if it were a different 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:37.280 geographical location. It's a very London story because the city 0:09:37.360 --> 0:09:43.239 was changing demographically, commercially, it was just growing so exponentially 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:46.280 in this time period. There's this huge influx of people, 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:51.000 this urban, dense mobile population, a huge influx in consumerism, 0:09:51.160 --> 0:09:55.880 and all of that creates this kind of chaotic environment 0:09:55.960 --> 0:09:58.360 where on a concrete level there was just a lot 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:03.640 of transactional sex happening, and then a lot of disease, 0:10:04.360 --> 0:10:07.679 and then also a whole market that kind of develops 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:12.560 to treat it. So the kind of short answer is, yes, 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:15.079 just more people are having sex. And also I think 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:20.160 what's really changing is this urban center that accommodates this 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:23.640 kind of hot bed of sexual activity and disease. 0:10:24.360 --> 0:10:28.240 As you describe sex, it was transactional nature, but it 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:31.559 was also a private matter, like it wasn't necessarily something 0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:36.320 that was discussed openly, and venereal disease was also called 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:39.960 the secret disease, which kind of denotes again it's shameful nature. 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:44.600 And so given these intense pressures to remain silent about 0:10:44.640 --> 0:10:47.400 sex or about the pox, I'm guessing it's not something 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:51.200 that was openly written about for many people, whether in 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:54.160 diaries or not. And so I'm curious about your sources 0:10:54.200 --> 0:10:56.960 and what types of sources did you find helpful in 0:10:57.000 --> 0:10:59.360 researching for this, and how often did you have to 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:01.640 read between the lines. 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:04.320 A lot I had to read between a lot of 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:08.160 lines I did. My initial take was exactly what you mentioned. 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:12.760 I'm going to look in private writing people. Certainly, if 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:17.439 you're dealing with such a stigmatizing kind of life altering ailment, 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:20.400 surely you wrote about it. And it was really hard 0:11:20.400 --> 0:11:24.680 to find people writing about their firsthand experiences in personal writing. 0:11:24.800 --> 0:11:28.520 So I found lots of examples of people describing other 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:33.360 people in letters or diaries, much harder to find first 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:36.000 person accounts. That makes sense for all the reasons you 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:39.000 just said, it's this deeply stigmatizing disease. People didn't want 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:42.880 to admit they had it. They would use euphemisms. So 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:45.679 what I did was I tried to think creatively, what 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:48.160 are other kinds of sources I can use to get 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:53.160 at that experience outside of personal writing. So I looked 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:55.840 to recipe books to try to kind of recover what 0:11:55.880 --> 0:11:58.920 people were doing at home in these semi private moments. 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:03.720 How we're people trying to treat themselves privately. I looked 0:12:03.760 --> 0:12:07.040 to court records to try to get access to kind 0:12:07.080 --> 0:12:11.480 of non elite people giving testimony in court where the 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:14.360 disease comes up in court. So I tried to also 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:18.640 use sources that we know that historians have used for 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:22.319 decades to talk about this disease and study this disease, 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:26.800 like advertisements for patent drugs, so what we would call 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:30.040 over the counter cures, but I tried to look at 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:32.000 them in a new way. So the kind of typical 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:34.920 way historians use these sources is they look at how 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:39.520 healers are promoting themselves, how they're marketing their drugs. I 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:42.000 decided to look at the address printed at the bottom 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:44.200 of the ad, which is where the healer said you 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:46.920 can come by my pill or come get my elixir. 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:50.000 And it wasn't always at their house. It was sometimes 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:53.120 an address to a bookstall, or a chocolate shop or 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:56.800 a bakery. And I decided to make a map of 0:12:56.840 --> 0:13:00.840 where you can find cures for this disease. So it's 0:13:00.960 --> 0:13:04.360 just one example of using a historical source we know 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:07.160 about that's been used many many times, but just trying 0:13:07.160 --> 0:13:09.920 to use it in a new, more creative way to 0:13:09.960 --> 0:13:12.240 get at a different slice of the story. 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:16.000 Let's take a quick break, and when we get back, 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:35.720 there's still so much to discuss. Welcome back everyone. I've 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:39.040 been chatting with doctor Olivia Wiser about her book The 0:13:39.120 --> 0:13:42.960 Dreaded Pox, Sex and Disease in Early modern London. Let's 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:46.520 get back into things, not just what this disease, the 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:49.400 effect of this disease on someone's body, but the effect 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:53.040 that it had on their social standing, on their relationships, 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:56.880 on how they viewed themselves. And there was early on 0:13:56.920 --> 0:13:59.000 in your book a really fascinating kind of series of 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:02.920 diary entries where Samuel Peeps writes about his brother and 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:05.280 there's this kind of question of does he have a 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:08.719 venereal disease? Is he dying of venereal disease? Is he 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:12.720 getting the all clear? And just these intense emotional perspectives 0:14:12.760 --> 0:14:16.640 of how someone's relationship is changing based on a diagnosis. 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:19.640 And I thought that was just a really fascinating glimpse 0:14:19.720 --> 0:14:23.000 into the effect that this disease could have on someone's life. 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:25.480 Yeah, and it's a great example of how those third 0:14:25.520 --> 0:14:28.520 party you know, before I was saying, oh, it's so frustrating, 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:30.920 I can't get a first person account. Peeps isn't writing 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:33.600 about himself, He's writing about his brother. But it still 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:36.320 has so much to offer us in terms of kind 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:40.040 of insight into just the emotional toil of a diagnosis. 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:42.000 Because of course Peeps is just worried about himself. He's 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:43.600 worried about number one. What is this going to do 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:46.640 to my reputation? We have the same last name? What 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:49.560 are we going to do? So? And I just love 0:14:50.280 --> 0:14:54.600 this diary by Samuel Peeps. It's just really intimate and 0:14:55.160 --> 0:14:58.600 candid in a way that we don't often see in diaries. 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:01.480 Yeah, yeah, it's fun. I was like, we need a 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:02.920 TV show based on. 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:07.200 This diary's I support that. I would watch it. I 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:09.320 would love to consult on it. Just on the record. 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:11.160 Thank you great, well, I think we have an idea 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:12.120 in place. Let's go. 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:18.520 Yeah. And in addition to these, you know, court records, advertisements, 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:22.720 personal diaries, the pox also makes an appearance in creative 0:15:22.760 --> 0:15:25.200 work from this era, whether and it's in a song 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:27.120 or a book or a play or an opera or 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:29.880 something like that. When it does make an appearance, what 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:32.000 did it signify? 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:37.440 It almost always signified debauchery or vice or illicit behavior. 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:40.280 And I mean it when you look in court records 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:43.640 that have nothing to do with sex, court records for 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:46.240 you know, I looked at a lot for marriage separation, 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:50.440 things that aren't sexual necessarily, it comes up as just 0:15:50.600 --> 0:15:56.120 like a slander for just bad illicit negative. It's often 0:15:56.440 --> 0:16:02.760 used to describe women. So the disease typically kind of stereotypically. 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:03.880 Was blamed on women. 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:07.960 And there's lots of medical debates about how women there's 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:12.320 something about women's bodies physiologically that make them prone to 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:16.360 not only spreading the disease but somehow like creating fomenting 0:16:16.400 --> 0:16:20.240 it in their hot wombs. And so this phrase pocky 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:23.280 horror was used all the time as just kind of 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:27.520 like a general slander to just connote bad immoral behavior. 0:16:27.800 --> 0:16:29.200 You know, there are lots of debates where did it 0:16:29.240 --> 0:16:30.600 come from? Is it from the New world? Is it 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:32.080 from the old world? And there were a lot of 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:35.200 assumptions that at first it comes from women. It must 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:37.840 be you know, women are to blame obviously time and again. 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:42.080 And then as the you know, Londoners at least are 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:44.200 seeing all these new kinds of people that they had 0:16:44.200 --> 0:16:47.080 never seen before in diseases, and plants come into the 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:50.320 metropol from these New World explorations, it kind of shifts 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:53.480 a little bit, and there's this layering of well it 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:58.320 also this disease also must originate in women's bodies who 0:16:58.320 --> 0:17:01.920 are from hot climates, something about their hotness, their heat. 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:04.520 And then there's all these debates that it must come 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:06.600 from the New World. It couldn't possibly come from here, 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:09.840 and it's being brought from the New World, and therefore 0:17:09.920 --> 0:17:12.360 we need to ingest the plants from the New World 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:15.919 as our treatment because they will be suited best to 0:17:16.000 --> 0:17:19.040 treat this disease. So there is lots of talk about 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:22.040 who to blame, and there's a whole nother discourse about like, 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:24.280 you know, the English call it the French disease because 0:17:24.280 --> 0:17:26.159 it comes from France, and the French called the Italian 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:31.040 disease because you know, and everyone's passing shift the blame, yeah, exactly, 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:34.360 passing the blame around. So there's definitely debates about it, 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:37.240 and they never settle on one answer. 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:40.760 It's always up for debate exactly, of course, of course. 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:45.000 And so even when this idea of where it came 0:17:45.040 --> 0:17:48.320 from shifted, it still was women at the source of it. 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:51.240 They were like were men ever blamed or was it 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:55.240 ever thought like this is his fault for you know whatever. 0:17:55.640 --> 0:17:56.679 It's such a good question. 0:17:56.840 --> 0:17:59.560 And if you look in the obvious places, and by 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:03.800 obvious I mean historical documents that are about the disease 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:07.439 that say venereal disease on the cover, or the Great Pox, 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:09.960 these are all euphemisms for the same kind of nexus 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:10.560 of diseases. 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:12.680 It's always women. It's always women. 0:18:12.840 --> 0:18:16.040 But when you start looking at non medical sources, at 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:18.600 the kinds of sources I've been talking about, so for example, 0:18:18.640 --> 0:18:22.400 court records or women trying to sue for a separation 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:25.639 like basically a divorce, you see that it's not at 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:28.720 all a case that there's a difference between what I 0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:31.520 would say is the discourse, like the narrative, the story 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:34.520 people tell, and the reality on the ground, and the 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:36.800 reality on the ground when you look at medical cases 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:40.080 of who's coming to get treated, and when you look 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:44.080 at court records and who's talking, it's so clearly not 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:47.879 women who are being blamed. It's time and again my 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:51.240 husband went to the bathhouse, slept with a prostitute, came 0:18:51.320 --> 0:18:55.720 back infected me. I mean, it's so different from what 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:58.160 the discourse is in these other kinds of texts. 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:01.399 We've talked about how this is an era pre germ theory, 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:04.480 but that doesn't mean that contagion was not a concept. 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:06.640 And so, you know, just based on what you said, 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:10.159 it was clear that people saw the connection. It was like, okay, 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:13.240 well we know the root of transmission. How much did 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:16.600 just the act of sex? Was that everything? Or was 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:19.480 it also a role of constitution, type of sex? You know, 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:22.920 what were the set of circumstances that people believed led 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:26.240 to somebody else developing or transmitting pocs. 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:30.439 They absolutely understood the sexual connection. It was a different 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:33.520 kind of connection than what we have in our minds. 0:19:33.840 --> 0:19:36.280 So we have in our minds you have sex with 0:19:36.359 --> 0:19:41.680 someone who has an STI and you contracted. They had 0:19:41.680 --> 0:19:44.639 a much more complex understanding of the role of sex 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:48.479 within just daily life, and so it wasn't necessarily just 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:50.199 sex with an infected person. 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:51.400 It could have been. 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:54.840 Too much sex, or the wrong kind of sex, or 0:19:55.680 --> 0:19:59.360 not the kind of activity that is healthy for your 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:02.320 particular constitution. So it was a much more kind of 0:20:02.359 --> 0:20:06.600 complicated interaction. And then layered on top of that, there 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:09.359 was also this belief that you could get this disease. 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:10.720 From non sexual interaction. 0:20:11.560 --> 0:20:16.280 So there were two kind of forms of this disease, 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:18.640 and I'm saying disease as if it's this one thing 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:22.320 and it's just this kind of collection of symptoms. One 0:20:22.880 --> 0:20:25.440 was what we might have in our minds, and this 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:28.320 is what they called the great pox, a true pox 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:31.320 is what they called it. And this is a more 0:20:31.400 --> 0:20:35.000 severe form of venereal disease that you would get from 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:38.840 penetrative sex. And then there's this milder form, and that's 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:41.440 where we see words like clap and gnarrhea, which are 0:20:41.440 --> 0:20:44.520 not kind of one to one. They don't correlate to 0:20:44.560 --> 0:20:47.440 what we think of when we say those words today. 0:20:47.480 --> 0:20:49.760 This was considered to be a milder form of the disease, 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:52.320 and you could get it from sharing a drink, a glass, 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:54.520 you could get it from there's one example I found 0:20:54.520 --> 0:20:59.200 where someone shares a glove with somebody, or you can 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:02.040 get it from share a bed, and just like sweating 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:04.679 in the sheets. So the idea was that this milder 0:21:04.720 --> 0:21:07.800 form of the disease you got from spreading pockey matters 0:21:07.840 --> 0:21:10.920 what they called it, and that could be from sexual activity, 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:15.720 but it could also be from these non sexual activities. 0:21:15.760 --> 0:21:18.960 And then to make it even more complicated, another way 0:21:19.000 --> 0:21:20.840 you could get that mild form of the disease is 0:21:20.880 --> 0:21:23.960 through not the spread of pocky matter, but just from 0:21:23.960 --> 0:21:27.240 trauma to your genitals. So there's one man who talks 0:21:27.280 --> 0:21:30.080 about falling off his horse and getting a clap, and 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:33.360 another case I found where someone talks about getting hit 0:21:33.400 --> 0:21:35.919 in the groin with a stone and he gets the clap. 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:38.960 So I think the modern mind is like, wait, well, 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:42.359 what did he really have? And I don't know. I 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:45.840 just don't know. Maybe who knows. We'll never know. But 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:50.119 it gets very complicated when you especially when I was 0:21:50.160 --> 0:21:52.560 looking at court records, where all of a sudden, the 0:21:52.600 --> 0:21:57.560 difference between getting this disease from a stone versus someone 0:21:57.640 --> 0:22:01.960 sexually assaulting you is huge, Right, That's a felony versus 0:22:02.000 --> 0:22:06.359 a misdemeanor versus nothing. So it becomes really important in 0:22:06.400 --> 0:22:08.920 certain contexts to kind of parse these types of diseases. 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:13.800 In your book, you describe the pos as seeming modern 0:22:13.920 --> 0:22:16.560 for its moment, and you call it the first modern disease. 0:22:16.640 --> 0:22:19.120 Can you tell me more about what you mean by 0:22:19.160 --> 0:22:22.960 the first modern disease and how this perception is kind 0:22:22.960 --> 0:22:24.679 of reflected in writing from the time. 0:22:25.640 --> 0:22:29.000 I use that word to kind of capture the way 0:22:29.000 --> 0:22:31.439 we think of disease, and I think it's something that 0:22:31.520 --> 0:22:34.600 we take for granted that a disease is a biological 0:22:34.720 --> 0:22:37.159 entity that affects all of us more or less the 0:22:37.200 --> 0:22:39.720 same way. So if you and I both are given 0:22:39.760 --> 0:22:43.000 the same diagnosis, will probably manifest the same set of symptoms. 0:22:43.119 --> 0:22:44.840 If you and I have the same set of symptoms, 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:48.280 we'll probably be diagnosed with the same disease. That this 0:22:49.040 --> 0:22:53.240 idea that diseases are fixed, that they are all affecting 0:22:53.240 --> 0:22:55.320 all bodies more or less similarly, and that they are 0:22:55.359 --> 0:22:57.879 treated and progressed more or less similarly. This is a 0:22:57.920 --> 0:23:02.080 modern concept that's born in the nineteenth century. So this 0:23:02.160 --> 0:23:06.080 book that I wrote is before any of that. It's 0:23:06.640 --> 0:23:10.119 way before germs, the discovery of germs and germ theory. 0:23:10.680 --> 0:23:13.439 But it's also before this kind of conceptual what I 0:23:13.440 --> 0:23:18.480 would call revolution in thinking about diseases as stable, uniform entities. 0:23:18.680 --> 0:23:22.119 So this time period, diseases, like we've been talking about, 0:23:22.359 --> 0:23:25.760 they're fluid, they're a group of symptoms. You and I 0:23:25.800 --> 0:23:29.800 could have the same symptoms and get completely different diagnoses. 0:23:29.840 --> 0:23:33.200