Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp and on Jergie bas This
Speaker 1: is part two of our little series here on syphilis.
Speaker 1: The first episode, Syphilis the Great Imitator, dealt with the
Speaker 1: the organism that causes syphilista, which is known as Trepanema palladum,
Speaker 1: actually the subspecies of Trepema palladum, and this is all
Speaker 1: caused by this tiny, tightly coiled spiral key, this little
Speaker 1: bacterium that ends up causing all of this trouble for
Speaker 1: those that infected. So if you have not listened to
Speaker 1: that first episode, go back, have a listen. We will
Speaker 1: walk you through all the stages of a syphilis infection
Speaker 1: from that from the tiny annoyances of the primary infection
Speaker 1: on up to the disastrously deforming and ultimately lethal stages
Speaker 1: of tertiary syphilis, as well as the treatment of it. Finally, um,
Speaker 1: all right, this has been mentioned in the other episode,
Speaker 1: but at bears mentioning again. The first recorded epidemic of
Speaker 1: narial syphilis occurred in Europe in by the close of
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century. It was pretty rampant. In fact, in Naples, Italy,
Speaker 1: there was such a huge outbreak that the pope that said, hey,
Speaker 1: we need some help here. Soldiers were brought in, five
Speaker 1: thousand of them. And what do you think happened, Well,
Speaker 1: they got to the prostitutes and they got more syphilis,
Speaker 1: and then of course they just got worse and worse.
Speaker 1: So what we're talking about is is a disease that
Speaker 1: ravished for centuries throughout Europe, and today we're going to
Speaker 1: try to get at the origins of it, and they
Speaker 1: we're gonna try to tease out some of the morality
Speaker 1: that has been paired with it, as well as the
Speaker 1: sort of xenophobia that surrounds it as well. Yeahs, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned before, it's it's it's kind of difficult to
Speaker 1: overstate the importance of syphilis in Western culture for those
Speaker 1: four and a half plus centuries. Um that it that
Speaker 1: that it was a problem. Um And And as we
Speaker 1: discussed in the last episode, syphilis is not eradicated. It
Speaker 1: is still around the day. It's still something to be
Speaker 1: concerned about, and it's still something we have to to
Speaker 1: treat both wet with with penicillin and with education. But
Speaker 1: during the fourteenth century to the early twentieth century, it
Speaker 1: was really permeating the fabric of culture. It was rampant. Yes,
Speaker 1: when we break down the percentages of it, it's going
Speaker 1: to vary depending on where in Europe you're looking, but
Speaker 1: you're generally looking at a ten to fifteen percent of
Speaker 1: the population has syphilis. Uh, you know, with some degree
Speaker 1: uh you know, margin for error there, and then uh
Speaker 1: upwards of in military because then you have younger men
Speaker 1: who are initially traveling around and they are the ones
Speaker 1: that are spreading it from place to place, visiting prostitutes,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Yeah, and because of its association with Columbus,
Speaker 1: who sailed under the Spanish flag, it was called the
Speaker 1: Spanish disease for a while, and then the French called
Speaker 1: it the Neopolitan or Italian disease because they caught it
Speaker 1: from residents of Naples, or should they say when Naples,
Speaker 1: of course, was one of the major outbreak areas. The
Speaker 1: Russians called it a Polish disease, the Polish called it
Speaker 1: a Russian disease, and the Turks called it a Christian disease,
Speaker 1: while the English called it the French park. So what
Speaker 1: do you see here, a lot of finger pointing. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's always the other that you blame the disease, and
Speaker 1: you have to draw that firm line in your worldview
Speaker 1: between we the clean and they the disease, and hope
Speaker 1: that that line doesn't come to envelope you as well. Um,
Speaker 1: the the Columbus thing is so fascinating and it's and
Speaker 1: it's a it's a point that is continually studied and
Speaker 1: argued about. But again we see that first big outbreak
Speaker 1: in and as we all know in four nine two
Speaker 1: Columbus sailed the ocean. So it sounds it sounds almost
Speaker 1: too good to be true, slash too horrible to be
Speaker 1: treat It almost sounds too easy, but but we keep
Speaker 1: coming back to it time and time again. Here we
Speaker 1: have Columbus sailing to this drastically new land and their contact,
Speaker 1: be it sexual or merely skin on skin, is occurring
Speaker 1: between members of his his crew and the native population.
Speaker 1: And then they return to Europe, and then in their
Speaker 1: wake we see the emergence of this, this this powerful illness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you see a lot of wrongheaded ideas about this,
Speaker 1: this idea of xenophobia, right, this fear of strangers, this
Speaker 1: idea that there are savages that have uh spread this
Speaker 1: disease to Europeans via Columbus. Yeah, you laid with a
Speaker 1: member of another nation, you late with a member of
Speaker 1: another another race. All these these weird taboos spring up,
Speaker 1: uh and seemingly in concert with the parameters of the illness.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned before, one of the reasons that syphilis
Speaker 1: is such a captivating topic is because it's so rife
Speaker 1: for metaphor, you know, be it a metaphor of morality,
Speaker 1: of a metaphor of racism, nationalism, sexism, whatever you want
Speaker 1: to throw at it. It seems to conform to that
Speaker 1: that form rather nicely. Yeah. Now we will get back
Speaker 1: to Columbus and we're going to try to get to
Speaker 1: the origins of of syphilis. But before we do, it's
Speaker 1: just worth it to say that this is syphilis, and
Speaker 1: trying to get to the origins of it is really difficult. Um,
Speaker 1: it's very hard to study. There are many strains, some
Speaker 1: of which don't exist anymore, and then you have anecdotal
Speaker 1: claims throughout the centuries, so you can't really pair that with,
Speaker 1: you know, a systematic approach to say, yes, indeed, this
Speaker 1: was a case of syphilis, because again, as we have
Speaker 1: mentioned before, syphilis is the great imitator. So it's very
Speaker 1: possible that someone had leprosy and not syphilis exactly. And
Speaker 1: and again on that difficult to study. Note, you you
Speaker 1: can't grow syphilis in a culture. You can't have a
Speaker 1: little petrie dish of syphilis. Even today, we have to
Speaker 1: study it in rabbits, so right, you have to have
Speaker 1: it in an actual organism to really get a good
Speaker 1: idea about it. That being said, there have been these
Speaker 1: pre Columbian theories kicked around. In other words, this idea
Speaker 1: of hey, could syphilis have existed before the New World,
Speaker 1: previous to the late fourteen hundreds in the old world.
Speaker 1: That's again called the pre Columbian theory. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is this theory is basically that to say that, well,
Speaker 1: when we have other illnesses, and if you look back
Speaker 1: at some accounts of leprosy, you might say, well that
Speaker 1: that kind of leprosy doesn't match up as well with
Speaker 1: our modern understanding of leprosy. Perhaps that was a different ailment,
Speaker 1: Perhaps that was in fact syphilis. And instead we're just
Speaker 1: kind of latching on to this easy explanation of Columbus.
Speaker 1: Since this groundbreaking um expedition takes place just a few
Speaker 1: years before this major outbreak. But of course, the world
Speaker 1: because I mean it makes sense, right, I mean, the
Speaker 1: world is more complicated than one ship sailing off and
Speaker 1: coming back. There are other movements going on in the world.
Speaker 1: It's a time of great change. People are moving around,
Speaker 1: not only throughout Europe, but you have movements going into
Speaker 1: into into Asia and Africa. So what so why not?
Speaker 1: Why why could there not be another route for this
Speaker 1: illness to take? And we'll discuss that, we'll really try
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of this. But so when
Speaker 1: we call when we say pre Columbian, we're talking about
Speaker 1: Old World. When we talk about Columbia and we're talking
Speaker 1: about New World generally here old world is Europe, Old
Speaker 1: world is is Western civilization. New World the America's Columbia, etcetera. Right,
Speaker 1: And if you're going to talk about New World, you
Speaker 1: have to talk about something called yaws and facial Now,
Speaker 1: these are tropical diseases that are closely related to tromponema palladum,
Speaker 1: which is of course syphilis, although they are different. Bagel
Speaker 1: causes mouth stores and lumps in the bone, and yaws
Speaker 1: caused skin stores and disfiguring growths on the legs. So
Speaker 1: of course they're they're related to syphilis, but they are
Speaker 1: non venereal, right, they're spread through skin to skin contact,
Speaker 1: They're not They're they're not straight up venereal diseases. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, granted you could catch them in skin to
Speaker 1: skin contact during sexual intercourse, but they're not depending on
Speaker 1: that as their mode of transmission. Yeah, but these are
Speaker 1: all trimp and emial diseases that are These are all
Speaker 1: close relatives of the subspecies of Trimpandema palladum that causes syphilis.
Speaker 1: And we bring them up because they're important to study.
Speaker 1: If you're if you're trying to look at where syphilis,
Speaker 1: syphilis originated from, then you're gonna want to look at
Speaker 1: yaws and basil because paleo pathologists Bruce and Christine Rothschild
Speaker 1: used that information to point toward a new World origin
Speaker 1: of syphilis. They examined six hundred and eighty seven skeletons
Speaker 1: from archaeological sites in the US. We're talking about arranging
Speaker 1: an age from four hundred to six thousand years and
Speaker 1: what they found is that populations to the south look
Speaker 1: to have syphilis, while those to the north had yaws.
Speaker 1: And then by contrast, they examined one thousand Old World
Speaker 1: skeletons dating to before contact with the New World and
Speaker 1: they found zero cases of syphilis. So this kind of
Speaker 1: gets you onto the route of well, maybe the New
Speaker 1: World did have the case of syphilis, although it's not
Speaker 1: that clear cut, as well discussed, and this leads us
Speaker 1: to what is called the Unitarian hypothesis, which has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with Unitarians in the religious sense of the world,
Speaker 1: where don't worry, Unitarians, We're not We're not nailing this
Speaker 1: one on you. Unitarian in this sense that that it
Speaker 1: unites the Old World and New World hypotheses regarding the
Speaker 1: emergence of syphilis in Europe. The basic idea here is
Speaker 1: that you do have Columbus and New sailors setting sail
Speaker 1: from Europe to the New World to the Americans, and
Speaker 1: when they're there, they do come into skin to skin
Speaker 1: contact sexual and non sexual with natives there, and then
Speaker 1: they end up acquiring trimpanemal diseases. Now, you know, again,
Speaker 1: think to the Jewel, think to to tent, to, think
Speaker 1: to yads, but not necessarily syphilis proper but they bring
Speaker 1: back a relative of syphilis, and they bring it back
Speaker 1: to a drastically new incubation world. We're talking about a
Speaker 1: different environment because in the in the America's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: individuals with syphilis they're gonna largely be in you know,
Speaker 1: smaller communities. But then you bring them to a European
Speaker 1: port town. You bring it to a world where individuals
Speaker 1: are wearing more clothes, thus allowing for less skin on
Speaker 1: skin contact. You're bringing it to a world where you
Speaker 1: have brothels, a world where you have tiny ships tightly
Speaker 1: packed with men sailing from one port to the next
Speaker 1: port throughout Europe. And what happens, according to this hypothesis
Speaker 1: is that the the treponemal disease changes and and we
Speaker 1: get this subspecies of Trumpanema palladum that causes syphilis as
Speaker 1: we know it. So it is a story of mutation
Speaker 1: under new environmental circumstances. Yeah, if anyone is interested in
Speaker 1: taking a deeper dive into this and and some of
Speaker 1: the skeletal evidence behind this, there is a paper two
Speaker 1: thousand and twelve paper called the Science behind pre Columbian
Speaker 1: evidence of Syphilis and Europe research by documentary and that
Speaker 1: goes into this, uh much more. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: quote Molly Zuckerman. She's one of the authors of paper.
Speaker 1: She says, in reality, it appears that venereal syphilis was
Speaker 1: the byproduct of two different populations meeting and exchanging a pathogen.
Speaker 1: It was an adaptive event, the natural selection of a disease,
Speaker 1: independent of morality or blame. Yeah, it's not as situation
Speaker 1: of ah, the sinful sailors are all those diseased natives
Speaker 1: in this new world. It's it's something more complicated than that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, at the outset of this, the researchers
Speaker 1: for this paper, they really wanted to sort of disprove
Speaker 1: this idea that Columbus and his crew were vectors for
Speaker 1: syphilis because I thought, it can't be that just you know,
Speaker 1: Columbus and his his guys hung out in America and
Speaker 1: then brought it back to Europe and spread syphilis all
Speaker 1: over the place. Can't be that simple. And it's not
Speaker 1: that simple, um, you know, because the trick here is
Speaker 1: that it mutated, it adapted rather um. But they really
Speaker 1: they went into it with the intent of saying, no,
Speaker 1: it can't be yeah, because it does sound like something
Speaker 1: you would read and sort of conspiracy theory kind of
Speaker 1: message board, right, like, well, these two dates line up,
Speaker 1: we can correlate this little little bit. Therefore, that must
Speaker 1: be what happened. Um Now, Now, we do want to
Speaker 1: drive home that these are all hypotheses and that this
Speaker 1: is still an area that everyone that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of papers that come out about this, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of discussion, a lot of argument, lots did a
Speaker 1: lot of disagreement. So there's no definitive answer here, and
Speaker 1: it may indeed be one of those areas where we
Speaker 1: never have a definitive answer. It's true. And uh, you
Speaker 1: know that the researchers who worked on that paper also
Speaker 1: worked on some of them worked on a different paper
Speaker 1: looking at fifty four published reports of pre Columbian evidence
Speaker 1: and skeletal remains of syphilis, and they found there that
Speaker 1: again there wasn't enough supporting information and real evidence to
Speaker 1: say that it existed in its form of syphilis as
Speaker 1: we know and talk about it now in the old world.
Speaker 1: So again, there seems to be some sort of direction
Speaker 1: here in terms of the way that the river is
Speaker 1: streaming with information, But it doesn't mean that this is
Speaker 1: the endpoint of the origins of syphilis. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about more of the sort of sights and sounds
Speaker 1: and smells of what it might be like in a
Speaker 1: syphilitic era in Europe. And I wanted to just read this.
Speaker 1: This is from the BBC, A Cultural History of Syphilis.
Speaker 1: It says in the fourteen nineties and apparently new and
Speaker 1: terrifying disease struck naples in southern Italy and swept fire
Speaker 1: like across Europe, reaping a dreadful human cost. It must
Speaker 1: have been as though Hell had come to earth. Pustules
Speaker 1: spread across the gentitals and the face of its many sufferers.
Speaker 1: Unbearable gastro intestinal pain followed upon fevers, screamingly severe headaches
Speaker 1: and other symptoms. Finally, flush fell from bones. Syphilis had
Speaker 1: arrived in Europe, where it would stay misunderstood, lacking any
Speaker 1: form of cure, for nearly five years. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: pretty rough sounding. Um. And again, remember that this was
Speaker 1: not a disease that affected just the poor. This was
Speaker 1: a disease that affected rich and poor alike, that affected
Speaker 1: royalty and peasant, that affected clergy members, anyone that was
Speaker 1: engaging in sexual contact, uh, random risk, a high risk
Speaker 1: of acquiring uh this this illness. And yeah, this was
Speaker 1: not a quiet sort of illness. I mean people could
Speaker 1: smell you before you even came around. And we're talking
Speaker 1: about rotting flesh. We are talking about your face bearing
Speaker 1: the marks of syphilis, your body bearing the marks of it.
Speaker 1: In fact, you could even kind of see it as
Speaker 1: the sort of scarlet letter A brought into your flesh. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: the metaphorical power of syphilis is unavoidable here because you
Speaker 1: already have the idea, uh in Western culture, that that
Speaker 1: physical deformities may signal inner deformities, that that that that
Speaker 1: an inner sin can have a fleshly manifestation. And it's
Speaker 1: super easy to apply that line of thinking to syphilis,
Speaker 1: because here's something that's spread through sex. Here is something
Speaker 1: that's spread through uh through sin, if you will, and
Speaker 1: and then has these these terrifying physical um manifestations, certainly
Speaker 1: in its later stages. So it's it's easy then for
Speaker 1: someone to point the figure and say this, this is
Speaker 1: the way. These are the wages of sin right here.
Speaker 1: All you have to do is look at this individual,
Speaker 1: Look at the look at the sores on their body.
Speaker 1: Look at the deformities of their facial feature. Look what
Speaker 1: has happened to them? Uh, And and so you see
Speaker 1: this just throughout its stuff, throughout its four and a
Speaker 1: half centuries of unchecked rampaging, and even beyond into the
Speaker 1: twentieth century and even into the twenty one. There's there's
Speaker 1: a moral aspect to syphilis and to other venereal diseases.
Speaker 1: This is something you caught because you were doing something
Speaker 1: that was wrong. Like that's the script that is often
Speaker 1: applied to the scenario. Yeah, and now people have the
Speaker 1: sort of calling card hallmarks of that disease. Right. They
Speaker 1: look at you and they say, oh, let me see
Speaker 1: you've you've got a nasty rash there, you've lost your hair, um,
Speaker 1: perhaps your nose is even caving in into what's called
Speaker 1: saddle nose. And so what do people do, Well, they
Speaker 1: try to find anything and everything that might cover up
Speaker 1: their transgressions or what would be perceived as transgression. Right.
Speaker 1: And bear in mind again through all of this, that
Speaker 1: there are no set of standard symptoms for syphilis, and
Speaker 1: there are stages where it's undetectable. So so every everyone's
Speaker 1: going crazy with ways to detect and treat it, while
Speaker 1: the illness itself is is so difficult to get your
Speaker 1: hands on. It's the great imitator, it's the it's the
Speaker 1: great hider um. So yeah, bad stuff is happening to
Speaker 1: your body in the varying stages of syphilis. So one
Speaker 1: thing you might do is to, of course, you may
Speaker 1: cover things up. Since we were wearing clothes, we're wearing makeup.
Speaker 1: You can apply clothing and makeup to cover up your source. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, syphilis just creates this whole cottage industry of
Speaker 1: different things you can buy and do to either feel
Speaker 1: better or look better. So there might be some sort
Speaker 1: of snake oil that you can buy right that has
Speaker 1: absolutely no medical marriage. Or you might visit your local
Speaker 1: wig maker quite a bit, because again, you want to
Speaker 1: cover up the bald patch on your head or the
Speaker 1: baldness so that people don't suspect that you have syphilis.
Speaker 1: And if you are a prostitute, American is a must
Speaker 1: because yeah, you might be saving your pupd care any
Speaker 1: way to cut down on lights, but then you also
Speaker 1: might have an outbreak of syphilis down there. You want
Speaker 1: to disguise the signs, so you get a wig for
Speaker 1: your genitals also called a mercan, which is not a
Speaker 1: Muppet character. Yeah. They apparently used a lot now in
Speaker 1: for films, especially historical films. Yeah, but historically it was
Speaker 1: more a matter of venereal diseases for the men. Generally,
Speaker 1: wasn't really an option because the well there's just more
Speaker 1: to cover up down there, and uh, just do a
Speaker 1: Google im his search, he'll see what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: All right, Yeah, there are some rely just sticks there
Speaker 1: that you can't quite uh cover with American. But what
Speaker 1: happens when your nose caves in and your flesh begins
Speaker 1: to rot away, Well, this creates a problem, and in
Speaker 1: general it was kind of a rough time for noses anyway.
Speaker 1: If you remember the story of Tico Briy, the the astronomer,
Speaker 1: I think we did an episode on him, or at
Speaker 1: least he's come he comes up a time we did. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: fascinating individual. Um. There may be some biographers that that
Speaker 1: creep syphilis in there, but but I think it's pretty
Speaker 1: established that that he lost the nose in a duel.
Speaker 1: So on on one level, you can lose that nose
Speaker 1: in a duel. Living an adventurous lifestyle, getting yourselves into
Speaker 1: arguments with other armed gentleman. But you can also acquire
Speaker 1: sephilis through your adventurous lifestyle. And then you see the
Speaker 1: saddle nose, the eventual rotting away of the nose. So
Speaker 1: one thing you can do is you can buy a
Speaker 1: fake nose to where over your destroyed nose. And this
Speaker 1: is this is as simple as it sounds. If you've
Speaker 1: ever seen a digital underground video and you've seen Humpty
Speaker 1: Hump with the big fake nose on his the on
Speaker 1: a face who incidentally, according to the backstory, lost it
Speaker 1: in a frying accident, I believe so, So no dueling
Speaker 1: or syphilis involved with Humpty. But but it's basically the
Speaker 1: same scenario, a fake nose that is strapped onto the
Speaker 1: body or held with wires over the over the the
Speaker 1: the vacant area. Yeah, in fact, and this is according
Speaker 1: to Lindsay fitz Harris, who is in medical historian and
Speaker 1: writes on the Kirojian Apprentice, which is a great website
Speaker 1: documenting medical surgeries. She writes that this deformity was so
Speaker 1: common amongst these suffering from the pots, as it was
Speaker 1: sometimes called, that no nose clubs sprung up in London
Speaker 1: on February eighteen seventy for The Star reported Miss Sanborn
Speaker 1: tells us and an eccentric gentleman, having taken taken a
Speaker 1: fancy to see a large party of noseless persons, invited
Speaker 1: everyone thus afflicted whom he met in the street to
Speaker 1: dine on a certain day at a tavern where he
Speaker 1: formed them into a brotherhood. And on this site again
Speaker 1: that Lindsay fitz Harris is put together, there is a
Speaker 1: great example of one of these sort of noses that's
Speaker 1: attached to a pair of glasses, that's attached to a
Speaker 1: sort of almost looks like a headgear, like early headgear braces,
Speaker 1: and it's one that that a female patient war Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can imagine that warn with a wig, and
Speaker 1: it makes it makes perfect sense. And you know, the
Speaker 1: no Nose Club also makes a lot of sense because
Speaker 1: if you're you're dealing with this illness, you're having to
Speaker 1: cover yourself up and where this this this fake nose
Speaker 1: over your your your face. I mean, there's gonna come
Speaker 1: a time when you want to be able to just
Speaker 1: take that off and be yourself, no matter what has
Speaker 1: happened to yourself in this illness. You want to be
Speaker 1: able to just say, hey, here we are. We may
Speaker 1: not have noses anymore because of this illness, but hey,
Speaker 1: we're people, and we want to look at each other
Speaker 1: like we're people and not worry about oh whatsever and
Speaker 1: all these other people that don't have syphilis, or don't
Speaker 1: realize they have syphilis, or in other stages of the
Speaker 1: illness are looking at me and judging me for for
Speaker 1: what I am and making judgments about my moral character
Speaker 1: based on what has happened. Well, and fitz Harris has
Speaker 1: that blog post Still Syphilis a Love Story which essentially
Speaker 1: talks about this, and I believe it is miss Sanborn
Speaker 1: who eventually takes the fake nose off at her husband's
Speaker 1: request because he accepts her as she is. You know,
Speaker 1: it's interest. I was listening to that to BBC program,
Speaker 1: The Cultural History of Syphilis, which I'll link to on
Speaker 1: the landing page for this podcast episode. But they go
Speaker 1: into some of the cases of individuals, particularly in the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, who end up, if not finding pride in
Speaker 1: their syphilitic appearance, they at least, you know, come to
Speaker 1: own it. Uh. You see individuals like Sir William Davenant
Speaker 1: uh sixteen of six through sixteen sixty eight as a poet, playwright,
Speaker 1: and he was famously not shy about being painted or
Speaker 1: depicted in artwork without a false nose. So you see
Speaker 1: a very sunken saddle nose, you know, almost a vacant
Speaker 1: um you know, part of his facial features. And he was,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty upfront about it. Um. Another instance, you
Speaker 1: have artist Gerard Delorice one through seventeen eleven, who is
Speaker 1: actually a prominent painter uh and uh and he was
Speaker 1: born with congenital syphilis. Um. And he he was. There's
Speaker 1: actually a painting of him by Rembrandt, which I'll put
Speaker 1: on the blog for everyone to see because it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a Rembrandt piece, so it's it's splendid to behold.
Speaker 1: But here's an individual who you know, he's setting for
Speaker 1: a portrait. He's he's he's open and uh and free
Speaker 1: about who he you know, he's not trying to hide
Speaker 1: it at this point. And you see a number of individuals,
Speaker 1: say John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, who was
Speaker 1: portrayed by Johnny Depp in the movie Libertine. Um. You
Speaker 1: see individuals like this who basically say, yeah, I have syphilis.
Speaker 1: I have had a wildlife, and the wages of having
Speaker 1: that wildlife are syphilis. So it's it's almost like a
Speaker 1: badge of honor. Yeah, It's like when you hear I've
Speaker 1: heard people say point at rock stars aging rock stars,
Speaker 1: and you know, say, oh, they look rough, but they
Speaker 1: partied hard to get there, you know, to say that,
Speaker 1: you know, what has happened to them is like a
Speaker 1: badge of honor because it says they have enjoyed their
Speaker 1: younger life and that is why, uh, their their older
Speaker 1: form is so decrepit. And think that's what you're seeing
Speaker 1: in some of these individuals. Now, granted, these are individuals
Speaker 1: that we're living at the in the upper echelon of society,
Speaker 1: so they had a little more room too, you know,
Speaker 1: to grab onto that pride. They weren't dying of syphilis, uh,
Speaker 1: you know in the slum. Uh. And likewise, some of
Speaker 1: these individuals too also had taken to various um ideas
Speaker 1: about how syphilis could be treated. So they thought that
Speaker 1: perhaps their their syphilis was being treated and managed by
Speaker 1: regular mercury treatments in one of those mercury steam baths, which,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned in the previous episode, may uh, you know,
Speaker 1: was was likely making their symptoms worse in some cases.
Speaker 1: So they thought that they were above sort of some
Speaker 1: of the social rules in place because of their position
Speaker 1: and society and be that they might have been vanquishing it.
Speaker 1: So they were uh, not quite as concerned about how
Speaker 1: they looked. Perhaps, Yeah, and if you're taking if you're
Speaker 1: looking at the body from a less religious standpoint, you're
Speaker 1: looking at more from a hedonistic or even mechanical standpoint,
Speaker 1: then you're saying, hey, I live in a world in
Speaker 1: which syphilis exists, and if I behave a certain way,
Speaker 1: syphilis is what happens to my body. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: some of these cases too, you see individuals where they
Speaker 1: they're they're almost happy when they finally catch syphilis because
Speaker 1: it means, if nothing else, it means they don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about catching syphilis anymore. You know, they're they're
Speaker 1: they're no longer living in the shadow of syphilis, but
Speaker 1: within the dark of syphilis. And you can see where
Speaker 1: there might be a certain amount of empowerment there. Certainly,
Speaker 1: if you have to latch onto something, you might as
Speaker 1: well latch onto that, although again you'd have to be
Speaker 1: in a really specific social position to do that, and
Speaker 1: you'd have to be a male for certain. No. Yes, indeed, now,
Speaker 1: if you had the money, the wherewithal, and you did
Speaker 1: not want to wear a fake nose, or you weren't
Speaker 1: ready to come out to the world that you had syphilis,
Speaker 1: then you would try a kind of nasal reconstruction, which
Speaker 1: in the sixteenth century was called the Indian method, and
Speaker 1: this involved cutting a nose sized section of skin from
Speaker 1: the forehead. So there's again another calling card or hallmark
Speaker 1: that you have the disease, because your nose looks great,
Speaker 1: but you've got a big patch of skin, but you
Speaker 1: have a really big wig. That's true, that's true, you
Speaker 1: have a nice wig. But they take that skin from
Speaker 1: the forehead and they would attach it to the bridge
Speaker 1: of the nose to maintain a steady blood supply. And
Speaker 1: then that flap was twisted into place and sewn over
Speaker 1: the damaged area, which kind of created a replacement nose.
Speaker 1: But again it wasn't perfect and you know, really cold weather,
Speaker 1: it would not turn the same color as the rest
Speaker 1: of your nose. So there were certain telltale signs that
Speaker 1: it may look like an intech nose, but it is
Speaker 1: not your perhaps knows that you were born with. But
Speaker 1: it turns out that there's a better and perhaps more
Speaker 1: horrific way to take a stab at plastic surgery or
Speaker 1: early plastic surgery. You know what it is tempting to
Speaker 1: say it's horrific, but it but in you know, another way,
Speaker 1: it's kind of beautiful and it gets it how malleable
Speaker 1: our flesh really is. Because again modern plastic surgery, the
Speaker 1: plastic is referring to the plasticity of the flesh, that
Speaker 1: you can craft flesh into a form. Yeah. And actually
Speaker 1: this method did and does inform plastic surgeons about how
Speaker 1: skin grows and how you can mold it and and
Speaker 1: sculpt it. So yeah, in this we see the sixteenth
Speaker 1: century advent of the Italian method. Now to to picture this, um,
Speaker 1: if you don't have an image of it in front
Speaker 1: of you, um, And and if you're not driving a
Speaker 1: car doing anything where you need your hands place, place
Speaker 1: your your palm of your hand, uh, kind of on
Speaker 1: your forehead, okay, and then allow your nose to to
Speaker 1: touch your arm. That is basically the position where the
Speaker 1: surgeon would would lock your arm into place. There would
Speaker 1: be like a head vice type of scenario going on,
Speaker 1: so that you could not move your arm away. You
Speaker 1: cannot move your the flesh of your arm away from
Speaker 1: the flesh of your face. And then that's where you
Speaker 1: perform the the the skin graft. You walk a pedicle
Speaker 1: of flesh, you sort of cut it away from the forearm,
Speaker 1: and you stitch it into place where the nose should
Speaker 1: be in play of the nose that you've lost two
Speaker 1: syphilis or duels or what have you, and then that's
Speaker 1: held in place while the the grafted skin grows onto
Speaker 1: the face. So for a brief period of time, you
Speaker 1: have effectively sown your arm, or a surgeon has effectively
Speaker 1: sown your arm to your face. And then once the
Speaker 1: graft is taken, then you cut the arm away from
Speaker 1: it and you've you've essentially walked as a piece of
Speaker 1: flesh off of your arm onto your face and then
Speaker 1: use that to form a new nose, which is kind
Speaker 1: of brilliant, and honestly, you ask a plastic surgeon about
Speaker 1: this and they'll be like, this is a great way
Speaker 1: to try to get the skin to graft onto other
Speaker 1: skin and then be able to shape it um. The
Speaker 1: only problem here is that for about two weeks, you're
Speaker 1: walking around with your your hand stuff in your head
Speaker 1: and you can't really move your nose right because that's
Speaker 1: now stuck to you your arm. Yeah, I'm guessing you're
Speaker 1: probably not doing a whole lot of walk around town
Speaker 1: like that. But but yeah, there's going to be a
Speaker 1: weird period there. But you know, the Italian method, it's
Speaker 1: a remarkable what it can do. Like it may be
Speaker 1: summoning images of like a really bad plastic surgery job
Speaker 1: or something. But I've I've seen some images, particularly like
Speaker 1: particularly late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds, in which you
Speaker 1: see multiple pedicles of flesh that are essentially walked up
Speaker 1: the body to the face to repair individuals who say
Speaker 1: lost their lower jaw uh to to gunshot wound. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you're able to walk all these pedicles up
Speaker 1: to the face and it looks kind of ghastly at first,
Speaker 1: but then you start putting them in their place, and
Speaker 1: at the end of the of this series of procedures,
Speaker 1: you have a much more uh normal looking visage uh
Speaker 1: there in place of the damaged tissue. So in in
Speaker 1: in this scenario, we see the impact of syphilis on
Speaker 1: early rhino pass plastic in Europe. But we also see
Speaker 1: other ways in which syphilis ends up change in the
Speaker 1: way that that that medicine is practiced, uh through throughout
Speaker 1: the the old world. For instance, immediately it challenged humorism
Speaker 1: and the doctrine of contagion that was probablement the other day. Um.
Speaker 1: We also see syphilis as a catalyst for modern doctor
Speaker 1: patient confidentiality, because suddenly it becomes a kind of a
Speaker 1: calling card for some doctors. Hey, let me treat you
Speaker 1: for your syphilist because I'll keep it on the download. Now,
Speaker 1: we just kind of take that for granted that we
Speaker 1: go into a doctor, they're not going to laugh about
Speaker 1: syphilis to everyone in the neighborhood. And then this is
Speaker 1: another key fact that was brought up in the book
Speaker 1: Cleaned by Virginia Smith that I've referenced before in podcasts,
Speaker 1: and that is that previously you had you'd go into
Speaker 1: your your local barber shop and you'd have the barber
Speaker 1: tonsors in the front, barber surgeons in the back. You
Speaker 1: can have your haircut, your face shaved, all of that
Speaker 1: that take place in the front of the building and
Speaker 1: go into the back, into the yard or what have you.
Speaker 1: That's where you would receive minor surgeries. That's where you
Speaker 1: would uh take a bath and saying later as the
Speaker 1: as syphilis begins to spread, that's where you start getting
Speaker 1: treated for civilis that's where you might take your mercury bath.
Speaker 1: And so the prevalence of the disease and fear regarding
Speaker 1: the disease, this really leads to regulation. This really this
Speaker 1: leads to of course, you know, paranoia. And so you
Speaker 1: see the two separates. So you see the separation of
Speaker 1: the barber tonsor and the barber surgeon. That's right, because
Speaker 1: that red and white striped barber pole used to indicate
Speaker 1: that there are surgeries down there. Right in case anybody's
Speaker 1: ever wondered why, Um, that poll is outside of a
Speaker 1: hair cuttery, all right. So that's this impact on on
Speaker 1: on medicine and medical surgeries um, as well as cottage
Speaker 1: industries like wig makers, right, and people who are are
Speaker 1: selling you know, snake oils. But there are certain things
Speaker 1: that you cannot cover up here when it comes to syphilis.
Speaker 1: And one of the things would be your teeth. Now
Speaker 1: you can pull all your teeth, you could put dentures in,
Speaker 1: but if you didn't want to do that you're kind
Speaker 1: of saddled with the ravages of your teeth bicyphilis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And one of the more one of the more particular
Speaker 1: things we see here with the teeth is something that
Speaker 1: pops up in cases of congenital syphilis, and that's something
Speaker 1: known as Hutchinson teeth. These are, you know, as with
Speaker 1: all things syphilis, the exact symptoms vary, but this is
Speaker 1: often typified by sharpened looking teeth or peg shaped teeth
Speaker 1: that kind of have sharpened points on the edges. Um.
Speaker 1: You can look for for images this online, I think,
Speaker 1: and actually I did a blog post um that I'll
Speaker 1: link to on the landing page for this podcast episode
Speaker 1: that includes, uh, the image that Julian and I are
Speaker 1: both looking at now. But they do have a kind
Speaker 1: of monstrous appearance either like sharpened teeth inside of a
Speaker 1: human mouth, particularly canine teeth. Yes, And so we start
Speaker 1: to look at this for a little bit, and uh,
Speaker 1: naturally your mind would turn to vampire teeth, because that's
Speaker 1: kind of what this looks like. It looks like a
Speaker 1: sort of non speraw version of vampire teeth. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it's led us some commentators to argue that the the
Speaker 1: evolution of the vampire myth in in Western civilization may
Speaker 1: have connections to cases of congenital or hereditary syphilis. The
Speaker 1: children are born like this, they have this kind they
Speaker 1: could have in addition to these teeth, they may also
Speaker 1: have elongated fingers, They may have elongated skull. There various
Speaker 1: other deformities that might be interpreted as monstrous by by
Speaker 1: somebody taking in the scenario UM and another connection between
Speaker 1: vampires and syphilis arguably takes us to bron Stoker himself,
Speaker 1: the author of the book Dracula. And another area where
Speaker 1: vampires and syphilis seem to converge UH is in the
Speaker 1: case of the eighteen novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Now
Speaker 1: bron Stoker's exact cause of death and he died in
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve A means you know somewhat something of the mystery,
Speaker 1: but some biographers attribute his death to tertiary syphilis and
Speaker 1: make the further argument that Dracula itself, as a literary
Speaker 1: work is is kind of reflecting not only the paranoia
Speaker 1: regarding syphilis that's present in the culture, but also Stoker's
Speaker 1: own uh experience with the illness itself. Because you look
Speaker 1: at vampires. You look attractively and you see uh, something
Speaker 1: that is at once sexual and monstrous. You see this
Speaker 1: this uh, this outsider that has come to in this
Speaker 1: case to England and is spreading this uh, this illness
Speaker 1: of vamporism. This uh, this this alien pathogen to to
Speaker 1: to to two women in the in the in the area. Yes,
Speaker 1: they are puncturing the women. Right, So again you have
Speaker 1: to use that metaphor which always comes up sex and vampires, right. Um.
Speaker 1: The in fact, there is you something this link uh
Speaker 1: to a class that's offered, the classes the vampire in
Speaker 1: Literature and Cinema, taught by Tomaslavljovich, who is a professor
Speaker 1: of Slavic and comparative literature, and he uses that vampire
Speaker 1: lore to explore folklore explanations of disease epidemics, which makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: especially if you're you're caught up in this. You'll say,
Speaker 1: it's the sixteenth century, is the seventeenth century, and this
Speaker 1: is this you know, pervasive disease, and you have all
Speaker 1: of these sort of myths surrounding it. It's possible that
Speaker 1: that people could sort of extrapolate like maybe there are vampires.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is how it's being spread. Yeah, because again
Speaker 1: four and a half centuries in which we could not
Speaker 1: cure it. So you're throwing what you can at. You're
Speaker 1: throwing you're throwing actual research, You're throwing snake oil, you're
Speaker 1: throwing mercury, steam baths, you're throwing religion. And again, you know,
Speaker 1: because again it just can't be It can't be overstated.
Speaker 1: The the connection between between morality and and stuff lists
Speaker 1: here and at least in the way that people try
Speaker 1: to understand it, or at least ended up viewing it
Speaker 1: in society. And so yeah, you're throw in a little
Speaker 1: myth in there, you throw a little magical thinking and
Speaker 1: and and there you go. You can easily see the
Speaker 1: vampire emerge. Nothing concrete there, but some food for thought. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which maybe why a vampire in the form of Count
Speaker 1: spiro Keet shows up in a Navy video in the
Speaker 1: seventies talking about STDs. Right, Yes, and you can watch this.
Speaker 1: I link to the video on a blood post I
Speaker 1: did for stuff to blow your mind. It's actually a
Speaker 1: fabulous documentary. It's kind of the style of of Schoolhouse
Speaker 1: Rocks and uh, and it has a Scooby Doo element
Speaker 1: to it as well, yeah, it's it's very silly. Look,
Speaker 1: even when they get into some of the rougher stuff,
Speaker 1: such as congenital syphilis or or actually showing illustrations of genitals,
Speaker 1: it's like the setup is very cartoon. It's Death him
Speaker 1: self is having an award ceremony handing out the coveted
Speaker 1: fourth Horseman Award for a disease that's that's done the
Speaker 1: best work in causing misery and death around the world,
Speaker 1: and who should win it but count sparrow Keet who
Speaker 1: represents syphilis. Uh, the the embodiment of ganahea takes some
Speaker 1: issue with it. Some of the other illnesses are like,
Speaker 1: what's so great about sparrow keyt what's he doing? There's
Speaker 1: a cure for it, blah blah blah, and so Death
Speaker 1: and spirow Key, mainly Death goes on to explain to
Speaker 1: us why how selphilis works and why it is a problem,
Speaker 1: and why enlisted navy men, why why sailors should be
Speaker 1: on guard and should go seek treatment for any time
Speaker 1: they have any kind of a flare out, which kind
Speaker 1: of gets into this whole rich tradition of the military
Speaker 1: trying to bring a level of awareness of STDs to
Speaker 1: UH to everyone. In fact, if you go back to
Speaker 1: War one in wor World two, UH, you will see
Speaker 1: all sorts of pamphlets and posters warning military members to
Speaker 1: be very careful to watch out for siff, watch out
Speaker 1: for gnahea. And it even reminded me of our Quarantine
Speaker 1: episode in which we talked about the U. S. Military
Speaker 1: quarantining prostitutes in an attempt to try to separate what
Speaker 1: they thought is disease carrying prostitutes with STDs from military members. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you have you have these campaigns that are basically
Speaker 1: in essence saying, hey, sailors, when you go into the
Speaker 1: next port town, please stay away from the prostitutes because
Speaker 1: you could catch syphilis and it's bad news. And you
Speaker 1: have to bear in mind too that even after the
Speaker 1: advent of penicillin, you'll have situations, particularly in wartime, where
Speaker 1: there's there's not an unlimited amount of penicillan to throw
Speaker 1: at at your your navy men's venereal diseases. You have,
Speaker 1: you have that a lot of that penicillan is earmarked
Speaker 1: for the battlefield for for use in helping with soldiers
Speaker 1: who have been injured in combat. You don't want to
Speaker 1: spend it all just on a bunch of horny sailors
Speaker 1: who can't control themselves when they go into a farm
Speaker 1: port of call. So they're throwing education at the problem
Speaker 1: as well. But they're speaking to a male audience, and
Speaker 1: and so the messaging tends to take on a very
Speaker 1: sexist feel. Yeah. In fact, one of the posters which
Speaker 1: I'm looking at right now is a really good example.
Speaker 1: It's this, Um it's a photograph of a girl that looks,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of innocent and pure and you know,
Speaker 1: very Norman Rockwell, Like this is the Norman Rockwell gal.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at very Norman Rockwell. In fact, she has
Speaker 1: this sort of beatific smile on as if you know,
Speaker 1: she's doing godly work. And then there are you know,
Speaker 1: some servicemen who are looking at her at a distance.
Speaker 1: And across this poster it says she may look clean,
Speaker 1: but and the butt isn't all red in all caps,
Speaker 1: and it says pick ups good time girls. Prostitutes spread
Speaker 1: syphilis and gonorrhea. You can't beat the axis if you
Speaker 1: get v D. And what I think is so interesting
Speaker 1: about this is that there are many other posters that
Speaker 1: have more I don't know, what are you say, tawdry
Speaker 1: looking women that there are basically saying they're prostitutes. But
Speaker 1: then you have this other sort of like I said,
Speaker 1: be to fix smiled, innocent looking girl. And the point is,
Speaker 1: as you say, is that they're speaking to men, and um,
Speaker 1: they're really underscoring this idea that STDs venarrow diseases all
Speaker 1: begin with women and that they are the font of evil. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean there's this darkness in the woman. It's almost
Speaker 1: like the like the feminine form as monster is the
Speaker 1: message here? And and you see again you do see
Speaker 1: some more fantastic, horrific visions of this. There's one where
Speaker 1: the woman is like moving a handheld mask away from
Speaker 1: her face and behind it there's a death skull. Um.
Speaker 1: I Salvador Dolly's illustration that he did for an anti
Speaker 1: sephilis poster in which you see the two buxom women. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it kind of melting kind of, but they
Speaker 1: look like a death skull. You know. It's one of
Speaker 1: those one of his classic stout images where you see
Speaker 1: the death's head uh in the form of the women.
Speaker 1: I'll be sure to throw that un stuff to your
Speaker 1: mind dot com as well. So everyone can see it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, weren't you telling me about the sixteenth century
Speaker 1: hypothesis of the woman as really the germanator of syphilis. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was this notion that the syphilis emerged because you
Speaker 1: had you had women, you had prostitutes who were having
Speaker 1: sex with multiple men. Uh, and then those semens with
Speaker 1: those different seeds would be inside her and they would
Speaker 1: mingle together and corrupt into the form of syphilis. So
Speaker 1: with and you know, they had no one there was
Speaker 1: no proof to back up this ridiculous theory, but it
Speaker 1: did place the blame firmly on on women and very
Speaker 1: moralistically as well. These women are are sinning, and therefore
Speaker 1: you have sickness arising from them. They are the sore
Speaker 1: of of the ailment itself. Yeah, and uh, not not
Speaker 1: to get too crazy here, but it just kind of
Speaker 1: brings me back this idea of witches. And we talked
Speaker 1: about which is and we talked about, you know, the
Speaker 1: power of women and sexuality. And again here we are
Speaker 1: subscribing the sort of power this death to women in
Speaker 1: the form of syphilis. And uh, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know that that's what all the poster artists intended, but
Speaker 1: it certainly captured the spirit of the times. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then again they were talking to a predominantly male audience.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned before, even in UH, you know, over
Speaker 1: the centuries that syphilis was really ravaging Europe, you saw
Speaker 1: the highest percentages of infection uh in the in the
Speaker 1: in the soldiers are certainly a higher percentage than in
Speaker 1: the rest of the population. So soldiers and prostitutes were
Speaker 1: a key area of transference. Indeed. All right, so there
Speaker 1: you have it again. There's just there's not enough time
Speaker 1: and even in a series of podcasts to really get
Speaker 1: into all the way it's syphilis informed UH Western culture
Speaker 1: during its UH four and a half centuries of unchecked life.
Speaker 1: But but hopefully we hit some of the high points.
Speaker 1: We hit some of the ideas who were play here
Speaker 1: about about us versus the other, about men and women,
Speaker 1: about the morality, about the cosmetics of dealing with syphilis,
Speaker 1: and if nothing else, that you serve as an interesting
Speaker 1: starting point for your own exploration of the topic. And
Speaker 1: also touching um the origin of it as well, and
Speaker 1: knowing that we don't have the end all be all
Speaker 1: theory in place yet, but we do have an idea
Speaker 1: of where it came from all right, Um, you guys
Speaker 1: can find us at a multitude of places. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Go to step to Blow your Mind dot com. That
Speaker 1: is the mothership. You will find all the blog posts,
Speaker 1: the podcast, the videos, et cetera, including a number of
Speaker 1: different items related to this syphilis series that we've put out.
Speaker 1: And you can also find us at Mind Stuff Show
Speaker 1: on YouTube. And if you've got some ideas percolating there
Speaker 1: about the top think we covered today or any sort
Speaker 1: of stories you want to share with us, you can
Speaker 1: do so below the mind at Discovery dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
Speaker 1: How staff works dot com