WEBVTT - Syphilis Through The Ages 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:06.080 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.080 --> 0:00:13.960 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:16.680 My name is Robert lamp and on Jergie bas This 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:20.000 is part two of our little series here on syphilis. 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:24.880 The first episode, Syphilis the Great Imitator, dealt with the 0:00:24.880 --> 0:00:29.160 the organism that causes syphilista, which is known as Trepanema palladum, 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:32.800 actually the subspecies of Trepema palladum, and this is all 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:36.680 caused by this tiny, tightly coiled spiral key, this little 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:39.920 bacterium that ends up causing all of this trouble for 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:42.360 those that infected. So if you have not listened to 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:45.640 that first episode, go back, have a listen. We will 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:48.959 walk you through all the stages of a syphilis infection 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:53.360 from that from the tiny annoyances of the primary infection 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:57.920 on up to the disastrously deforming and ultimately lethal stages 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:03.040 of tertiary syphilis, as well as the treatment of it. Finally, um, 0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:06.160 all right, this has been mentioned in the other episode, 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:09.920 but at bears mentioning again. The first recorded epidemic of 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:14.800 narial syphilis occurred in Europe in by the close of 0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:20.240 the fifteenth century. It was pretty rampant. In fact, in Naples, Italy, 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:24.440 there was such a huge outbreak that the pope that said, hey, 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:28.399 we need some help here. Soldiers were brought in, five 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:31.240 thousand of them. And what do you think happened, Well, 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:34.880 they got to the prostitutes and they got more syphilis, 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:36.640 and then of course they just got worse and worse. 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:41.640 So what we're talking about is is a disease that 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:46.400 ravished for centuries throughout Europe, and today we're going to 0:01:46.520 --> 0:01:50.920 try to get at the origins of it, and they 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:53.840 we're gonna try to tease out some of the morality 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:56.480 that has been paired with it, as well as the 0:01:56.520 --> 0:02:00.160 sort of xenophobia that surrounds it as well. Yeahs, as 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:02.720 I mentioned before, it's it's it's kind of difficult to 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:07.840 overstate the importance of syphilis in Western culture for those 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:11.720 four and a half plus centuries. Um that it that 0:02:11.720 --> 0:02:14.440 that it was a problem. Um And And as we 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:17.920 discussed in the last episode, syphilis is not eradicated. It 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:21.160 is still around the day. It's still something to be 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:23.440 concerned about, and it's still something we have to to 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:28.240 treat both wet with with penicillin and with education. But 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:31.240 during the fourteenth century to the early twentieth century, it 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:36.560 was really permeating the fabric of culture. It was rampant. Yes, 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:39.080 when we break down the percentages of it, it's going 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:41.640 to vary depending on where in Europe you're looking, but 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:45.040 you're generally looking at a ten to fifteen percent of 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:48.520 the population has syphilis. Uh, you know, with some degree 0:02:48.800 --> 0:02:51.600 uh you know, margin for error there, and then uh 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:57.239 upwards of in military because then you have younger men 0:02:57.400 --> 0:03:01.200 who are initially traveling around and they are the ones 0:03:01.280 --> 0:03:04.880 that are spreading it from place to place, visiting prostitutes, 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:09.320 et cetera. Yeah, and because of its association with Columbus, 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:12.400 who sailed under the Spanish flag, it was called the 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:15.160 Spanish disease for a while, and then the French called 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:19.680 it the Neopolitan or Italian disease because they caught it 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:22.760 from residents of Naples, or should they say when Naples, 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:26.200 of course, was one of the major outbreak areas. The 0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:29.799 Russians called it a Polish disease, the Polish called it 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:33.560 a Russian disease, and the Turks called it a Christian disease, 0:03:34.080 --> 0:03:36.560 while the English called it the French park. So what 0:03:36.600 --> 0:03:39.280 do you see here, a lot of finger pointing. Yes, 0:03:39.360 --> 0:03:42.000 it's always the other that you blame the disease, and 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:44.200 you have to draw that firm line in your worldview 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:47.320 between we the clean and they the disease, and hope 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:51.119 that that line doesn't come to envelope you as well. Um, 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:54.240 the the Columbus thing is so fascinating and it's and 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:58.640 it's a it's a point that is continually studied and 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:02.480 argued about. But again we see that first big outbreak 0:04:03.040 --> 0:04:07.600 in and as we all know in four nine two 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:11.800 Columbus sailed the ocean. So it sounds it sounds almost 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:14.480 too good to be true, slash too horrible to be 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:18.320 treat It almost sounds too easy, but but we keep 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:20.640 coming back to it time and time again. Here we 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:26.800 have Columbus sailing to this drastically new land and their contact, 0:04:28.000 --> 0:04:30.920 be it sexual or merely skin on skin, is occurring 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:35.000 between members of his his crew and the native population. 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:38.279 And then they return to Europe, and then in their 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:43.080 wake we see the emergence of this, this this powerful illness. Yeah, 0:04:43.120 --> 0:04:47.000 and you see a lot of wrongheaded ideas about this, 0:04:47.160 --> 0:04:51.279 this idea of xenophobia, right, this fear of strangers, this 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:55.240 idea that there are savages that have uh spread this 0:04:55.400 --> 0:05:00.040 disease to Europeans via Columbus. Yeah, you laid with a 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:01.960 member of another nation, you late with a member of 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:05.880 another another race. All these these weird taboos spring up, 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:10.120 uh and seemingly in concert with the parameters of the illness. 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:13.000 As we mentioned before, one of the reasons that syphilis 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:17.040 is such a captivating topic is because it's so rife 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:20.240 for metaphor, you know, be it a metaphor of morality, 0:05:20.360 --> 0:05:26.600 of a metaphor of racism, nationalism, sexism, whatever you want 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:29.320 to throw at it. It seems to conform to that 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:32.160 that form rather nicely. Yeah. Now we will get back 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:34.280 to Columbus and we're going to try to get to 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:37.800 the origins of of syphilis. But before we do, it's 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:41.000 just worth it to say that this is syphilis, and 0:05:41.000 --> 0:05:44.400 trying to get to the origins of it is really difficult. Um, 0:05:44.480 --> 0:05:47.520 it's very hard to study. There are many strains, some 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:51.880 of which don't exist anymore, and then you have anecdotal 0:05:51.960 --> 0:05:55.360 claims throughout the centuries, so you can't really pair that with, 0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:58.320 you know, a systematic approach to say, yes, indeed, this 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:01.479 was a case of syphilis, because again, as we have 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:05.200 mentioned before, syphilis is the great imitator. So it's very 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:10.120 possible that someone had leprosy and not syphilis exactly. And 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:12.560 and again on that difficult to study. Note, you you 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:15.000 can't grow syphilis in a culture. You can't have a 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:17.920 little petrie dish of syphilis. Even today, we have to 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:21.039 study it in rabbits, so right, you have to have 0:06:21.120 --> 0:06:23.800 it in an actual organism to really get a good 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:27.799 idea about it. That being said, there have been these 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:32.040 pre Columbian theories kicked around. In other words, this idea 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:36.720 of hey, could syphilis have existed before the New World, 0:06:36.760 --> 0:06:41.520 previous to the late fourteen hundreds in the old world. 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:44.680 That's again called the pre Columbian theory. Yeah, and this 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:47.400 is this theory is basically that to say that, well, 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:49.880 when we have other illnesses, and if you look back 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:52.240 at some accounts of leprosy, you might say, well that 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:54.680 that kind of leprosy doesn't match up as well with 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:57.799 our modern understanding of leprosy. Perhaps that was a different ailment, 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:01.120 Perhaps that was in fact syphilis. And instead we're just 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:05.000 kind of latching on to this easy explanation of Columbus. 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:09.440 Since this groundbreaking um expedition takes place just a few 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:13.600 years before this major outbreak. But of course, the world 0:07:13.600 --> 0:07:15.160 because I mean it makes sense, right, I mean, the 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:18.760 world is more complicated than one ship sailing off and 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:21.640 coming back. There are other movements going on in the world. 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:25.520 It's a time of great change. People are moving around, 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:29.600 not only throughout Europe, but you have movements going into 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:32.240 into into Asia and Africa. So what so why not? 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:35.320 Why why could there not be another route for this 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:38.560 illness to take? And we'll discuss that, we'll really try 0:07:38.600 --> 0:07:40.160 to get to the bottom of this. But so when 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:42.400 we call when we say pre Columbian, we're talking about 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:44.240 Old World. When we talk about Columbia and we're talking 0:07:44.280 --> 0:07:48.840 about New World generally here old world is Europe, Old 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:54.560 world is is Western civilization. New World the America's Columbia, etcetera. Right, 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:57.160 And if you're going to talk about New World, you 0:07:57.200 --> 0:07:59.960 have to talk about something called yaws and facial Now, 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:05.560 these are tropical diseases that are closely related to tromponema palladum, 0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:10.200 which is of course syphilis, although they are different. Bagel 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:14.560 causes mouth stores and lumps in the bone, and yaws 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:18.360 caused skin stores and disfiguring growths on the legs. So 0:08:18.560 --> 0:08:21.960 of course they're they're related to syphilis, but they are 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:25.520 non venereal, right, they're spread through skin to skin contact, 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:29.200 They're not They're they're not straight up venereal diseases. Um. 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:31.280 You know, granted you could catch them in skin to 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:35.000 skin contact during sexual intercourse, but they're not depending on 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:37.800 that as their mode of transmission. Yeah, but these are 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:39.679 all trimp and emial diseases that are These are all 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:45.560 close relatives of the subspecies of Trimpandema palladum that causes syphilis. 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:48.040 And we bring them up because they're important to study. 0:08:48.160 --> 0:08:51.000 If you're if you're trying to look at where syphilis, 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:53.960 syphilis originated from, then you're gonna want to look at 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:59.680 yaws and basil because paleo pathologists Bruce and Christine Rothschild 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:04.720 used that information to point toward a new World origin 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:09.439 of syphilis. They examined six hundred and eighty seven skeletons 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:14.240 from archaeological sites in the US. We're talking about arranging 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:17.320 an age from four hundred to six thousand years and 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:19.840 what they found is that populations to the south look 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:23.400 to have syphilis, while those to the north had yaws. 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:29.040 And then by contrast, they examined one thousand Old World 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:33.360 skeletons dating to before contact with the New World and 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:38.440 they found zero cases of syphilis. So this kind of 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:41.920 gets you onto the route of well, maybe the New 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:45.720 World did have the case of syphilis, although it's not 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:48.880 that clear cut, as well discussed, and this leads us 0:09:48.920 --> 0:09:52.440 to what is called the Unitarian hypothesis, which has nothing 0:09:52.480 --> 0:09:55.920 to do with Unitarians in the religious sense of the world, 0:09:55.960 --> 0:09:58.360 where don't worry, Unitarians, We're not We're not nailing this 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:00.840 one on you. Unitarian in this sense that that it 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:05.360 unites the Old World and New World hypotheses regarding the 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:09.560 emergence of syphilis in Europe. The basic idea here is 0:10:09.640 --> 0:10:12.600 that you do have Columbus and New sailors setting sail 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:15.720 from Europe to the New World to the Americans, and 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:17.840 when they're there, they do come into skin to skin 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:22.720 contact sexual and non sexual with natives there, and then 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:27.600 they end up acquiring trimpanemal diseases. Now, you know, again, 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:30.000 think to the Jewel, think to to tent, to, think 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:33.880 to yads, but not necessarily syphilis proper but they bring 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:36.199 back a relative of syphilis, and they bring it back 0:10:36.679 --> 0:10:41.200 to a drastically new incubation world. We're talking about a 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:44.280 different environment because in the in the America's uh, you know, 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:47.120 individuals with syphilis they're gonna largely be in you know, 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:50.360 smaller communities. But then you bring them to a European 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:53.480 port town. You bring it to a world where individuals 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:57.520 are wearing more clothes, thus allowing for less skin on 0:10:57.600 --> 0:10:59.880 skin contact. You're bringing it to a world where you 0:10:59.880 --> 0:11:03.160 have brothels, a world where you have tiny ships tightly 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:05.680 packed with men sailing from one port to the next 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:10.840 port throughout Europe. And what happens, according to this hypothesis 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:15.840 is that the the treponemal disease changes and and we 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:20.280 get this subspecies of Trumpanema palladum that causes syphilis as 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:22.400 we know it. So it is a story of mutation 0:11:22.840 --> 0:11:26.560 under new environmental circumstances. Yeah, if anyone is interested in 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:30.400 taking a deeper dive into this and and some of 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:34.040 the skeletal evidence behind this, there is a paper two 0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:36.959 thousand and twelve paper called the Science behind pre Columbian 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:40.920 evidence of Syphilis and Europe research by documentary and that 0:11:40.960 --> 0:11:44.040 goes into this, uh much more. And I wanted to 0:11:44.160 --> 0:11:47.280 quote Molly Zuckerman. She's one of the authors of paper. 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:51.280 She says, in reality, it appears that venereal syphilis was 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:56.319 the byproduct of two different populations meeting and exchanging a pathogen. 0:11:56.800 --> 0:12:00.520 It was an adaptive event, the natural selection of a disease, 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:05.640 independent of morality or blame. Yeah, it's not as situation 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:09.280 of ah, the sinful sailors are all those diseased natives 0:12:09.280 --> 0:12:14.400 in this new world. It's it's something more complicated than that. Yeah. 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:17.360 And you know, at the outset of this, the researchers 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:20.960 for this paper, they really wanted to sort of disprove 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:25.880 this idea that Columbus and his crew were vectors for 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:28.480 syphilis because I thought, it can't be that just you know, 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:32.720 Columbus and his his guys hung out in America and 0:12:32.760 --> 0:12:35.920 then brought it back to Europe and spread syphilis all 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:38.360 over the place. Can't be that simple. And it's not 0:12:38.520 --> 0:12:41.920 that simple, um, you know, because the trick here is 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:46.880 that it mutated, it adapted rather um. But they really 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:49.599 they went into it with the intent of saying, no, 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:52.400 it can't be yeah, because it does sound like something 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:55.680 you would read and sort of conspiracy theory kind of 0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:58.280 message board, right, like, well, these two dates line up, 0:12:58.880 --> 0:13:01.120 we can correlate this little little bit. Therefore, that must 0:13:01.120 --> 0:13:03.920 be what happened. Um Now, Now, we do want to 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:07.360 drive home that these are all hypotheses and that this 0:13:07.440 --> 0:13:09.679 is still an area that everyone that there are a 0:13:09.679 --> 0:13:11.199 lot of papers that come out about this, there's a 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:12.959 lot of discussion, a lot of argument, lots did a 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:16.079 lot of disagreement. So there's no definitive answer here, and 0:13:16.160 --> 0:13:17.600 it may indeed be one of those areas where we 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:21.160 never have a definitive answer. It's true. And uh, you 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:24.400 know that the researchers who worked on that paper also 0:13:24.480 --> 0:13:26.920 worked on some of them worked on a different paper 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:32.319 looking at fifty four published reports of pre Columbian evidence 0:13:32.360 --> 0:13:36.000 and skeletal remains of syphilis, and they found there that 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:41.920 again there wasn't enough supporting information and real evidence to 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:46.199 say that it existed in its form of syphilis as 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:50.320 we know and talk about it now in the old world. 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:53.240 So again, there seems to be some sort of direction 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:55.680 here in terms of the way that the river is 0:13:55.720 --> 0:13:58.280 streaming with information, But it doesn't mean that this is 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:02.800 the endpoint of the origins of syphilis. And we're gonna 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:05.080 talk about more of the sort of sights and sounds 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:08.360 and smells of what it might be like in a 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:14.520 syphilitic era in Europe. And I wanted to just read this. 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:17.720 This is from the BBC, A Cultural History of Syphilis. 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:21.320 It says in the fourteen nineties and apparently new and 0:14:21.440 --> 0:14:25.400 terrifying disease struck naples in southern Italy and swept fire 0:14:25.520 --> 0:14:30.200 like across Europe, reaping a dreadful human cost. It must 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:33.440 have been as though Hell had come to earth. Pustules 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:37.440 spread across the gentitals and the face of its many sufferers. 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:43.960 Unbearable gastro intestinal pain followed upon fevers, screamingly severe headaches 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:49.000 and other symptoms. Finally, flush fell from bones. Syphilis had 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:52.920 arrived in Europe, where it would stay misunderstood, lacking any 0:14:52.960 --> 0:14:57.000 form of cure, for nearly five years. Yeah, that's that's 0:14:57.040 --> 0:15:00.360 pretty rough sounding. Um. And again, remember that this was 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:03.600 not a disease that affected just the poor. This was 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:06.600 a disease that affected rich and poor alike, that affected 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:10.160 royalty and peasant, that affected clergy members, anyone that was 0:15:10.200 --> 0:15:14.560 engaging in sexual contact, uh, random risk, a high risk 0:15:14.560 --> 0:15:18.200 of acquiring uh this this illness. And yeah, this was 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:21.800 not a quiet sort of illness. I mean people could 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:23.640 smell you before you even came around. And we're talking 0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:27.520 about rotting flesh. We are talking about your face bearing 0:15:27.600 --> 0:15:30.720 the marks of syphilis, your body bearing the marks of it. 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:32.720 In fact, you could even kind of see it as 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:39.800 the sort of scarlet letter A brought into your flesh. Yeah. Again, 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:43.880 the metaphorical power of syphilis is unavoidable here because you 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:47.720 already have the idea, uh in Western culture, that that 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:53.800 physical deformities may signal inner deformities, that that that that 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:59.040 an inner sin can have a fleshly manifestation. And it's 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:01.880 super easy to apply that line of thinking to syphilis, 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:04.400 because here's something that's spread through sex. Here is something 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:08.560 that's spread through uh through sin, if you will, and 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:13.600 and then has these these terrifying physical um manifestations, certainly 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:16.960 in its later stages. So it's it's easy then for 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:19.520 someone to point the figure and say this, this is 0:16:19.560 --> 0:16:21.640 the way. These are the wages of sin right here. 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:23.440 All you have to do is look at this individual, 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:26.280 Look at the look at the sores on their body. 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:29.160 Look at the deformities of their facial feature. Look what 0:16:29.240 --> 0:16:31.600 has happened to them? Uh, And and so you see 0:16:31.600 --> 0:16:34.440 this just throughout its stuff, throughout its four and a 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:39.320 half centuries of unchecked rampaging, and even beyond into the 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:42.760 twentieth century and even into the twenty one. There's there's 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:46.600 a moral aspect to syphilis and to other venereal diseases. 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:49.800 This is something you caught because you were doing something 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:52.520 that was wrong. Like that's the script that is often 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:57.400 applied to the scenario. Yeah, and now people have the 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:01.480 sort of calling card hallmarks of that disease. Right. They 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:04.200 look at you and they say, oh, let me see 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:09.919 you've you've got a nasty rash there, you've lost your hair, um, 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:14.040 perhaps your nose is even caving in into what's called 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:17.120 saddle nose. And so what do people do, Well, they 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:21.479 try to find anything and everything that might cover up 0:17:21.520 --> 0:17:25.000 their transgressions or what would be perceived as transgression. Right. 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:26.760 And bear in mind again through all of this, that 0:17:26.800 --> 0:17:30.080 there are no set of standard symptoms for syphilis, and 0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:34.280 there are stages where it's undetectable. So so every everyone's 0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:37.120 going crazy with ways to detect and treat it, while 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:41.119 the illness itself is is so difficult to get your 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:44.000 hands on. It's the great imitator, it's the it's the 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:48.919 great hider um. So yeah, bad stuff is happening to 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:53.240 your body in the varying stages of syphilis. So one 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:54.679 thing you might do is to, of course, you may 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:57.840 cover things up. Since we were wearing clothes, we're wearing makeup. 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:01.760 You can apply clothing and makeup to cover up your source. Yeah. 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:05.800 In fact, syphilis just creates this whole cottage industry of 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:08.639 different things you can buy and do to either feel 0:18:08.680 --> 0:18:11.600 better or look better. So there might be some sort 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:14.320 of snake oil that you can buy right that has 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:18.320 absolutely no medical marriage. Or you might visit your local 0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:21.199 wig maker quite a bit, because again, you want to 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:24.240 cover up the bald patch on your head or the 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:27.360 baldness so that people don't suspect that you have syphilis. 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:32.080 And if you are a prostitute, American is a must 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:34.080 because yeah, you might be saving your pupd care any 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:35.919 way to cut down on lights, but then you also 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:39.240 might have an outbreak of syphilis down there. You want 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:42.320 to disguise the signs, so you get a wig for 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:46.359 your genitals also called a mercan, which is not a 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:50.040 Muppet character. Yeah. They apparently used a lot now in 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:55.560 for films, especially historical films. Yeah, but historically it was 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:59.240 more a matter of venereal diseases for the men. Generally, 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:03.040 wasn't really an option because the well there's just more 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:05.639 to cover up down there, and uh, just do a 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:07.480 Google im his search, he'll see what I'm talking about. 0:19:08.320 --> 0:19:10.080 All right, Yeah, there are some rely just sticks there 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:14.600 that you can't quite uh cover with American. But what 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:18.480 happens when your nose caves in and your flesh begins 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:22.040 to rot away, Well, this creates a problem, and in 0:19:22.119 --> 0:19:25.000 general it was kind of a rough time for noses anyway. 0:19:25.040 --> 0:19:29.200 If you remember the story of Tico Briy, the the astronomer, 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:31.080 I think we did an episode on him, or at 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:34.040 least he's come he comes up a time we did. Yeah, Yeah, 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:38.920 fascinating individual. Um. There may be some biographers that that 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:41.280 creep syphilis in there, but but I think it's pretty 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:43.760 established that that he lost the nose in a duel. 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:46.120 So on on one level, you can lose that nose 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:49.840 in a duel. Living an adventurous lifestyle, getting yourselves into 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:53.920 arguments with other armed gentleman. But you can also acquire 0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:56.919 sephilis through your adventurous lifestyle. And then you see the 0:19:56.960 --> 0:19:59.600 saddle nose, the eventual rotting away of the nose. So 0:19:59.760 --> 0:20:01.520 one thing you can do is you can buy a 0:20:01.560 --> 0:20:06.160 fake nose to where over your destroyed nose. And this 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:08.120 is this is as simple as it sounds. If you've 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:10.520 ever seen a digital underground video and you've seen Humpty 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:12.920 Hump with the big fake nose on his the on 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:16.560 a face who incidentally, according to the backstory, lost it 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:20.120 in a frying accident, I believe so, So no dueling 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:23.560 or syphilis involved with Humpty. But but it's basically the 0:20:23.600 --> 0:20:27.439 same scenario, a fake nose that is strapped onto the 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:31.159 body or held with wires over the over the the 0:20:31.600 --> 0:20:36.440 the vacant area. Yeah, in fact, and this is according 0:20:36.480 --> 0:20:39.639 to Lindsay fitz Harris, who is in medical historian and 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:44.960 writes on the Kirojian Apprentice, which is a great website 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:49.879 documenting medical surgeries. She writes that this deformity was so 0:20:49.920 --> 0:20:52.359 common amongst these suffering from the pots, as it was 0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:56.960 sometimes called, that no nose clubs sprung up in London 0:20:57.720 --> 0:21:02.440 on February eighteen seventy for The Star reported Miss Sanborn 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:05.879 tells us and an eccentric gentleman, having taken taken a 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:09.679 fancy to see a large party of noseless persons, invited 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:12.919 everyone thus afflicted whom he met in the street to 0:21:13.000 --> 0:21:15.480 dine on a certain day at a tavern where he 0:21:15.600 --> 0:21:21.160 formed them into a brotherhood. And on this site again 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:24.200 that Lindsay fitz Harris is put together, there is a 0:21:24.280 --> 0:21:29.720 great example of one of these sort of noses that's 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:33.080 attached to a pair of glasses, that's attached to a 0:21:33.160 --> 0:21:37.240 sort of almost looks like a headgear, like early headgear braces, 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:42.640 and it's one that that a female patient war Yeah, 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:44.199 and you can imagine that warn with a wig, and 0:21:44.240 --> 0:21:46.679 it makes it makes perfect sense. And you know, the 0:21:46.720 --> 0:21:49.920 no Nose Club also makes a lot of sense because 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:52.159 if you're you're dealing with this illness, you're having to 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:55.439 cover yourself up and where this this this fake nose 0:21:56.119 --> 0:21:58.800 over your your your face. I mean, there's gonna come 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:00.280 a time when you want to be able to just 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:04.840 take that off and be yourself, no matter what has 0:22:04.840 --> 0:22:06.879 happened to yourself in this illness. You want to be 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:09.320 able to just say, hey, here we are. We may 0:22:09.320 --> 0:22:12.200 not have noses anymore because of this illness, but hey, 0:22:12.200 --> 0:22:15.200 we're people, and we want to look at each other 0:22:15.280 --> 0:22:17.760 like we're people and not worry about oh whatsever and 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:20.080 all these other people that don't have syphilis, or don't 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:22.080 realize they have syphilis, or in other stages of the 0:22:22.119 --> 0:22:25.000 illness are looking at me and judging me for for 0:22:25.080 --> 0:22:27.959 what I am and making judgments about my moral character 0:22:28.200 --> 0:22:30.880 based on what has happened. Well, and fitz Harris has 0:22:30.960 --> 0:22:33.840 that blog post Still Syphilis a Love Story which essentially 0:22:33.840 --> 0:22:36.240 talks about this, and I believe it is miss Sanborn 0:22:36.320 --> 0:22:40.840 who eventually takes the fake nose off at her husband's 0:22:40.840 --> 0:22:44.280 request because he accepts her as she is. You know, 0:22:44.320 --> 0:22:46.240 it's interest. I was listening to that to BBC program, 0:22:46.320 --> 0:22:49.840 The Cultural History of Syphilis, which I'll link to on 0:22:49.960 --> 0:22:53.840 the landing page for this podcast episode. But they go 0:22:53.960 --> 0:22:58.119 into some of the cases of individuals, particularly in the 0:22:58.600 --> 0:23:03.800 seventeenth century, who end up, if not finding pride in 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:06.760 their syphilitic appearance, they at least, you know, come to 0:23:06.800 --> 0:23:10.120 own it. Uh. You see individuals like Sir William Davenant 0:23:10.600 --> 0:23:15.119 uh sixteen of six through sixteen sixty eight as a poet, playwright, 0:23:15.160 --> 0:23:18.840 and he was famously not shy about being painted or 0:23:18.880 --> 0:23:21.600 depicted in artwork without a false nose. So you see 0:23:21.640 --> 0:23:25.240 a very sunken saddle nose, you know, almost a vacant 0:23:25.680 --> 0:23:28.480 um you know, part of his facial features. And he was, 0:23:28.560 --> 0:23:31.399 you know, pretty upfront about it. Um. Another instance, you 0:23:31.440 --> 0:23:36.560 have artist Gerard Delorice one through seventeen eleven, who is 0:23:36.560 --> 0:23:40.399 actually a prominent painter uh and uh and he was 0:23:40.440 --> 0:23:43.880 born with congenital syphilis. Um. And he he was. There's 0:23:43.880 --> 0:23:47.080