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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the Vault, and boy do we

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Speaker 1: have a treat for you. This is a grand old episode, Robert,

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Speaker 1: I know you're very excited about this one. When did

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Speaker 1: this originally air in? Yes, this is this is a

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Speaker 1: much older episode than a lot of the other Vault episodes.

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Speaker 1: We've discussed. It published August and it's a pair of

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Speaker 1: episodes that Julie Douglas and I put together that discussed

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Speaker 1: the history of syphilis, how the science of syphilis, how

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Speaker 1: syphilis works. Yes, the the sexually transmitted disease syphilis, and

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Speaker 1: it is just a fascinating topic. It's it's easily one

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Speaker 1: of my my favorite episodes of all time. Uh So,

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Speaker 1: we we've taken those two episodes and stitched them together

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Speaker 1: into one episode. So it might be a little clunky

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Speaker 1: at times, but all the information is is definitely still valid.

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Speaker 1: Will there be vampires, There will be vampires. Be prepared

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Speaker 1: for the syphilitic vampire. All right, Well, let's go right in.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. From How Stuff Works,

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Speaker 1: Dot com hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and um Julie Douglas, and

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Speaker 1: I'd like you to take a moment to just try

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Speaker 1: and create, try and imagine the most destructive disease possible.

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Speaker 1: Imagine the disease that ravages the body. That ravage is

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Speaker 1: just about every tissue, every every part of the human

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Speaker 1: form that it takes down, the sex organs, that takes

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Speaker 1: apart the face, takes apart your identity, and in some

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Speaker 1: cases ultimately robs you of your mind as well before

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Speaker 1: killing you outright. Yeah, you mentioned sex organs. So also

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Speaker 1: imagine that there's a moral to mention to this disease

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Speaker 1: that would give you the sort of outward appearance that

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Speaker 1: perhaps you had been engaging in conduct unbecoming to you. Yes,

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Speaker 1: And of course, in all of this, we're talking about

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Speaker 1: a very real illness, and that is syphilis. We're actually

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Speaker 1: going to devote two whole episodes to syphilis here. This

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Speaker 1: first episode, Syphilis the Great Imitator, is mainly going to

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Speaker 1: focus on the organism that causes syphilis and how syphilis

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Speaker 1: manifests itself in the human body. In the second episode,

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Speaker 1: we are going to get into the cultural and historical

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Speaker 1: impact of syphilis, because that that in its own right

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Speaker 1: is an enormous topic of interest because for four and

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Speaker 1: a half centuries, syphilis ravages the Old World, ravages Western culture,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's really kind of difficult to overstate the

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Speaker 1: the role that syphilis played in coloring Western civilization during

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Speaker 1: that time. Yes, don't run away, because this is alf

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Speaker 1: really interesting that the bacteriaum itself is fascinating, and then

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Speaker 1: of course the cultural implications. Now we have our first

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Speaker 1: recorded epidemic of venereal syphilus occurring in Europe, and by

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Speaker 1: the close of the fifteenth century you have chaos just

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Speaker 1: reraining in Naples, Italy, where there's a huge outbreak. In fact, uh,

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Speaker 1: Pope Innocent the eighth asked French King Charles the Eighth

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Speaker 1: to invade the city with troops to try to keep

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Speaker 1: it under control. But what do you think happens? Well,

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Speaker 1: as we would, as we would eventually learned, sending troops

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Speaker 1: and to deal with syphilis not the best strategy because

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Speaker 1: because that they're going to end up catching the syphilis,

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Speaker 1: and then when you draw the troops out, they're going

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Speaker 1: to take the syphilis elsewhere exactly. And the problem here

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Speaker 1: is that syphis as being known as the great imitator

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Speaker 1: because it has all these different symptoms that at the

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Speaker 1: outset might be mistaken for other illnesses. So imagine this

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Speaker 1: time period in which this was happening and people not

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Speaker 1: quite knowing what they were dealing with. Yeah, to quote

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Speaker 1: Sir William Ostler, he says, no syphilis in all its

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Speaker 1: manifestations and relations and all other things clinical will be

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Speaker 1: added to you. There is no organ in the body,

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Speaker 1: nor any tissue in the organs, which syphilis does not invade.

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Speaker 1: And it is therefore manifestly difficult to speak, at least

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Speaker 1: at all concisely of the pathology of the disease, just

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Speaker 1: as as it is almost impossible to describe its clinical

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Speaker 1: symptoms without mentioning almost every symptom of every known disease.

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Speaker 1: And these symptoms are not going to be the same

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Speaker 1: from one person to the next. So you have a

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Speaker 1: disease that is that is seemingly very stealthy, very nefarious.

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Speaker 1: It's uh, it's it's changing its shape, it's changing its strategy,

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Speaker 1: it's going dormant, it's popping back up and uh. And

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Speaker 1: the whole time everyone's trying to understand what's going on,

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Speaker 1: how to prevent it. Uh. Again, there's there's this this

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Speaker 1: whole seemingly moral side to it because it's spread through

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Speaker 1: sexual contact, and it ends up spreading across every social

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Speaker 1: level in society. Uh. It's it's a disease that ravages

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Speaker 1: the poor, it ravages the rich. It's hitting the royalty,

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Speaker 1: it's hitting the clergy, it's hitting anyone who's engaging in

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Speaker 1: sexual contact, which everyone. Right. In fact, it is so

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Speaker 1: prevalent that you get a couple of references to it

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Speaker 1: in Shakespeare's works like Pox of your Houses and Romeo

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Speaker 1: and Juliet, which is now a curse like a pox

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Speaker 1: on you. It's but the problem with this is that

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Speaker 1: we tend to think of it as this antiquated illness, right,

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Speaker 1: it is not. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control

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Speaker 1: estimate that annually more than fifty five people in the

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Speaker 1: US get new syphilis infections, and during two thousand and

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Speaker 1: twelve there were more than forty nine thousand reported new

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Speaker 1: cases of syphilis compared to forty eight thousand estimated new

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Speaker 1: diagnosis of HIV. So it is still present and it

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Speaker 1: is most common in people between the ages of twenty

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Speaker 1: and twenty nine years of age, which has led it

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Speaker 1: to be called cupids disease by the way. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: of course, one other way we should mention that you

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Speaker 1: can transfer syphilis is through an unborn child, and so

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Speaker 1: congenital syphilis, which we'll we'll talk about a little bit

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Speaker 1: more later. That's also a huge problem because when the

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Speaker 1: syphilis manifests in a newborn child, uh, the the the

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Speaker 1: effects are kin it can be pretty disastrous. So once

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Speaker 1: against syphilis, even though it is a tremendous interest from

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Speaker 1: a historical standpoint, it is not a purely historical disease.

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Speaker 1: Now we just don't put as much emphasis on it

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Speaker 1: these days in terms of infectious diseases because it can

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Speaker 1: be controlled by penicillin, and we'll talk about that later. Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: it can be wiped out by penicillin and uh and

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Speaker 1: and that has been a huge advantage in the war

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Speaker 1: against syphilis for sure. But still it is it is

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Speaker 1: an adversary that that carries on even in the advent

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Speaker 1: of what would seem a magic bullet. Yeah, and let's

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Speaker 1: talk about this dastardly organism also known as treponema palladum. Yes,

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Speaker 1: such Treponema palladum, which is a treponemal disease. There are

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Speaker 1: other treponemal diseases which will get into these and cool

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Speaker 1: include a visual penta and yaws. None of these, of

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Speaker 1: course are sexually transmitted, but they are essentially skin ailments

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Speaker 1: that are that are transferred by skin to skin contact. Yes,

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Speaker 1: so they are related to Treponema palladum, but they themselves,

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Speaker 1: as you say, are not spread through sexual contact. And

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Speaker 1: I should add to to be clear if you want

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Speaker 1: to get really particular. Syphilis is caused by a subspecies

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Speaker 1: of Treponema palladum, essentially Treponema paladum palatum. But for all

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Speaker 1: intents and references going forward, Treponema palladum ke paalatum syphilis.

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Speaker 1: You'll know what we're talking about. Yeah, Now, this is

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Speaker 1: a spiral shaped bacterium also known as a sparrow keet

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Speaker 1: and we're talking about slender, spirally undulating bacteria here and

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Speaker 1: again it is most often spread by sexual contact, and

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Speaker 1: the disease occurs in three primary stages. We'll talk more

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Speaker 1: about that and uh, now, these these later stages that

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Speaker 1: will discuss are not so common in our modern era, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because the later stages obviously deal with a case of

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Speaker 1: syphilis that has not been treated, not been cured with

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Speaker 1: the penicillin. All right, let's let's talk about how syphalis

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Speaker 1: is transmitted. And I'd like you to think about this,

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Speaker 1: uh in terms of an invasion, because that's what it is.

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Speaker 1: We're dealing with an invasion of these spiral keets into

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Speaker 1: the human body. And this invasion takes place in a

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Speaker 1: few different phases. So syphilis can be spread again by

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Speaker 1: through the through the birthless, sent by kissing, close contact, um,

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Speaker 1: transfusion of fresh human blood. But the main ways that

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Speaker 1: it's that it's spreading us through sexual contact. We're talking

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Speaker 1: vaginal sex, oral sex, anal sex um. All of these

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Speaker 1: will serve as as a as an entry point. Now,

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Speaker 1: the way that the spiro keets into the body they

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Speaker 1: enter through the skin, and when intimate contact of this

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Speaker 1: nature is made, that is when when the spiro keet

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Speaker 1: enters the body, enters through the skin and there it

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Speaker 1: will hang out until it makes itself known in the

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Speaker 1: form of a syphilitics or also known as a shanker

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Speaker 1: and shankers occur mainly on external genitals that jina anus

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Speaker 1: or in the rectum. They can also occur on the

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Speaker 1: lips and in the mouth. So this is when you

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Speaker 1: see most of the transmission occur among people when these

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Speaker 1: sores are present. Right, this is primary syphilis. This is

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Speaker 1: first stage syphilis. And think of this in terms of

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Speaker 1: the enemy initially getting into the fortress. This is the

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Speaker 1: shanker is literally the entry point for the for the

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Speaker 1: spiro keets. And it may be a small number of

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Speaker 1: spire keets and maybe a larger number of spiro keets,

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Speaker 1: but this is where they're getting in. This is the

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Speaker 1: whole in the fortress wall. Yeah. And these shankers can

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Speaker 1: appear usually around twenty one days after infection, but sometimes

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Speaker 1: as little as ten or even ninety days. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: they may hang around for three to six weeks. And

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Speaker 1: here's the thing. They can if you look up pictures

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Speaker 1: online and sure you should definitely go into a Google

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Speaker 1: image search for for what these look like. Your loins,

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Speaker 1: your your loins, But they may look pretty intense at times,

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Speaker 1: but these are painless. Uh, And they're easily confused with

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Speaker 1: any number of small skin ailments that may pop up

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Speaker 1: in even a healthy person's life, you know, the stuff

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Speaker 1: like ingrown hairs or or you know, or various other bumps.

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Speaker 1: So that would be caused by by any number of

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Speaker 1: other ailments. Again, it's a great imitator. Right now. If

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Speaker 1: you do not get treated at this point, well then

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Speaker 1: it gets into secondary syphilis. And during this stage that's

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Speaker 1: when you see those skin rashes, swords in your mouth.

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Speaker 1: And so that's the primary stage and the and it's

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Speaker 1: key to note here that the shanker disappears advantishes. So

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Speaker 1: if you were concerned about it, if you really I

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Speaker 1: wonder what this painless, you know, ugly spot on my

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Speaker 1: genitals is, well, then it goes away. And that's one

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Speaker 1: of the dangers that we see over and over again

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Speaker 1: with syphilis is that the the infection seems to go away,

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Speaker 1: the illness may seem to go away, but as we're

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Speaker 1: about to learn, it does not. And again, imagine yourself

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Speaker 1: in you know, the fifteenth century. If you have this

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Speaker 1: and then that disappears, you think, oh, everything is fine, right,

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Speaker 1: So I got was upset over and over nothing, and

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Speaker 1: you know, maybe you didn't even notice. It's it's entirely

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Speaker 1: likely that one wouldn't even notice that the shanker had

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Speaker 1: popped up. Now, most likely you wouldn't have been treated

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Speaker 1: at that point in time because there wasn't anything necessarily

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Speaker 1: to treat you with that was really effective. So it

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Speaker 1: would then develop into a secondary stage called secondary syphilis,

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Speaker 1: in which you would have skin rashes and or sores

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Speaker 1: in your mouth, vagina, and anus also called mucus membrane lesions. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and you may also see other varying symptoms such as fever, lethargy, headaches,

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Speaker 1: general body aches, hair loss. And this is the point

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Speaker 1: of the invasion in which the enemy, the enemy made

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Speaker 1: it in in the primary stage and in second dary syphilis,

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Speaker 1: the enemy has spread throughout the castle, all right, and

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Speaker 1: and is making itself known throughout the invaded city, that

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Speaker 1: is the human body, right, and you are highly contagious

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Speaker 1: at this point in fact, gentle mill source caused by

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Speaker 1: syphilis make it a lot easier to transmit and acquire

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Speaker 1: things like HIV infection, right, so you can get a

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Speaker 1: secondary infection at this point in fact, there is an

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Speaker 1: estimated two to fivefold increased risk of acquiring HIV if

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Speaker 1: you're exposed to infection when syphilis is present in these

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Speaker 1: first and second stages. Now at this point after secondary syphilis,

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Speaker 1: and here again we see that the secondary syphilis, this

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Speaker 1: outbreak period, this goes away as well, which again could

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Speaker 1: lead someone to say, well, that was horrible, and maybe

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Speaker 1: they may not even realize that it was connected to

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Speaker 1: the primaries outbreak, and they might, but they can easily imagine, well,

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Speaker 1: I'm done with this now, it's it's it's it's done.

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Speaker 1: It's finished. Whatever illness was affecting me, the pox has

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Speaker 1: left me, right. Yeah, But little do they know that

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Speaker 1: this is just the latent stage of the US and

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Speaker 1: it's just waiting around. It might not even reveal itself

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Speaker 1: for decades. Yeah. So imagine the enemy has invaded the castle,

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Speaker 1: They've made a lot of mischief, and then suddenly they

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Speaker 1: seem to be gone. But they're not gone. There in

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Speaker 1: the basement. They're in the basement, They're in there in

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Speaker 1: every house in the city. There. They've literally become a

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Speaker 1: part of the city. They're essentially a sleeper cell. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And that is what latent syphilis is. Tertiary syphilis. The

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Speaker 1: stage really is quite gruesome because it kind of takes

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Speaker 1: everything in the body down to the studs, or more so,

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Speaker 1: I should say, it's like you say, the sleeper cells

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Speaker 1: in the basements, they become stronger and they come roaring

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Speaker 1: back into the body and they cause a lot of havoc. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's I mean, we see this over and over again

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Speaker 1: with with syphilis. But it has such metaphorical power. Is

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Speaker 1: one of the reasons that I think we're aside from

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Speaker 1: its uh, its power to harm and di figuous, uh,

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Speaker 1: the reason we're drawn to it so is you do

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Speaker 1: see this idea of of the the infection. It flared up,

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Speaker 1: then it flared up again, and then it comes back

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Speaker 1: in only fifteen of the case is a much stronger

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Speaker 1: form in the tertiary stage, far more debilitating, far more

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Speaker 1: destructive and ultimately lethal stage of the illness. Yeah. In

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Speaker 1: this late stage you could have symptoms that include difficulty

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Speaker 1: coordinating your muscle movements, paralysis, not being able to move

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Speaker 1: some of your body, uh, numbness, blindness, and dementia. And

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Speaker 1: then in the late late stages, the disease begins to

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Speaker 1: ravage your internal organs and that is what can result

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Speaker 1: in death. And this is one of the remarkable things

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Speaker 1: about this is that this stage can occur ten to

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Speaker 1: twenty years after primary syphilis. So this is it's again

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Speaker 1: the metaphorical phorical power of this. It's like the the

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Speaker 1: sins of the young individual coming back to destroy the

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Speaker 1: older individual. You know. It's um, it's it's gruesome stuff,

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Speaker 1: and and and against that one may not even remember

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Speaker 1: that for style, break all that clearly and suddenly all

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Speaker 1: these changes are happening to their body and ultimately to

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Speaker 1: their mind. Yeah. And we have largely up until this

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Speaker 1: point treated this in a very clinical fashion and not

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Speaker 1: really talked about the sights and the sounds and the

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Speaker 1: spells of what this looks like, which we'll do more

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Speaker 1: in the next podcast. But just know that at this point, um,

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Speaker 1: this this, this is really adding injury to insult because

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Speaker 1: you might have lost your nose, you know, and recovered

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Speaker 1: from that, and and all of a sudden you think

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Speaker 1: you're out in the clear, and boom it comes back

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Speaker 1: in in such a corrosive manner that you find out

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Speaker 1: that this is really the death knell. Yeah. Corrosive is

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Speaker 1: an excellent term to use because you see the you

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Speaker 1: see loss of teeth, you see the destruction of the

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Speaker 1: palette in the mouth, you see you see the the

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Speaker 1: the collapse of the nose into what is known as

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Speaker 1: saddle nose, where basically the nose collapses and around the

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Speaker 1: bridge and becomes kind of upturned and smaller looking, and

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Speaker 1: then they eventually um appear to rot entirely. Uh. Saddle

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Speaker 1: nose is also caused can also be caused by just

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Speaker 1: damage to the nose. You'll see boxers that suffer from

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Speaker 1: saddle nose. Also. UH. Extreme cocaine addiction can somehow sometimes

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Speaker 1: have that effect on individuals. But yeah, you're seeing it

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Speaker 1: attack your facial features, You're seeing it attack uh, your

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Speaker 1: genitals in a very destructive manner, and then also getting

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Speaker 1: into your organs. You only again to back to the

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Speaker 1: quote that I read at the beginning of the podcast

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Speaker 1: by h Dr William Osler. It it the spiral keets

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Speaker 1: of syphilis attack every part of the body like nothing

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Speaker 1: is off limits. To go back to that castle analogy

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Speaker 1: from from earlier, the invader has lived in the city

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Speaker 1: for ten to twenty years and now in potentially every

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Speaker 1: household in the city has decided to just burn everything

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Speaker 1: to the ground right now. The other part of this

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Speaker 1: is that syphilis, as we have mentioned before, can be

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Speaker 1: tru trans admitted through the placenta. So what does this mean.

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Speaker 1: It means that during that time period from the fifteenth

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Speaker 1: century to the twentieth century, there are a lot of

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Speaker 1: children born with syphilis also called congenital syphilis, and even

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Speaker 1: to this day, according to the World Health Organization, you

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Speaker 1: have a million children born annually with congenital syphilis. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's very serious stuff because nearly half of all

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Speaker 1: children infected with syphilis, whether or in the womb, die

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Speaker 1: shortly before or after birth, and sometimes this can also

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Speaker 1: result in still borns um And despite the fact that

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Speaker 1: syphilis can be cure with antbiotics if caught early, there

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Speaker 1: are arising rates among pregnant women in the United States,

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Speaker 1: and that of course has increased the number of infants

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Speaker 1: born with this. Now, some of the complications include blindness, deafness,

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Speaker 1: deformity of the face, and nervous system problems. Now, why

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Speaker 1: does syphilis hang out in the body so long, you

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Speaker 1: might be wondering, Well, Uh, it's it maybe due in

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Speaker 1: part to keep a pallatum having a slow dividing time

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Speaker 1: of thirty to thirty three hours, and it's likely that

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Speaker 1: t pautum undergoes an even slower rate of division during

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Speaker 1: the latent stages of the disease. So it's a it's

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Speaker 1: it's a long living creature. From a bacterial standpoint, yes,

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Speaker 1: it's like a bacterial croc pot Yeah. Alright, Um, let's

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Speaker 1: talk about the current state of treatment and infections. Oh,

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Speaker 1: but I say current, I have to mention that there

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Speaker 1: are a couple of old timey ways in which they

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Speaker 1: were thought to be cures for it, one of which

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Speaker 1: is mercury. Yes, inhaling mercury vapor. In fact, there is

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Speaker 1: This was so common for hundreds of years that a

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Speaker 1: little phrase came out of that, A night with venus

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Speaker 1: a lifetime with mercury. Yeah. So you would find yourself

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Speaker 1: going regularly for essentially skin treatments, taking these these mercury

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Speaker 1: steam bats and and enduring the harmful effects of that

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Speaker 1: of that mercury anihilation on top of the ravages of syphilis.

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Speaker 1: It did kill the sparrow key but yes, it also

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Speaker 1: poisoned the patient. Yeah. Well, there are a few different

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Speaker 1: factors involved there, because on one hand, uh, their you know,

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Speaker 1: their arguments to what effect the mercury had in killing

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Speaker 1: the sparrow keets. But then the sparrow keets are so

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Speaker 1: entrenched in the body, what can you do. Also, again,

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Speaker 1: think about that that primary and secondary stage, the flare

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Speaker 1: ups and the disappearance. You have individuals that could go

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Speaker 1: into it to be treated for for their symptoms of syphilis,

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Speaker 1: and low and behold, the symptoms vanish with the treatment,

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Speaker 1: not because of the treatment, just because of the timing

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Speaker 1: of the treatment. And ultimately, again you're dealing with four

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Speaker 1: and a half centuries in which there is no cure

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Speaker 1: for this illness. So if someone's trying to sell you

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Speaker 1: an illness, you're going to try and buy it. That's

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Speaker 1: just how it goes. And you know, if this disease

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Speaker 1: is ravaging my body, if you tell me that mercury

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Speaker 1: might help, then I'm probably going to try mercury. Sure,

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Speaker 1: you're going to try anything at that point, including malaria,

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Speaker 1: which was apparently something that was discovered in n by

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Speaker 1: Julius Wagner Jarig to help halt some of the symptoms

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Speaker 1: of syphilis, particularly in neurosyphilis, that advanced stage in which

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Speaker 1: you get psychosis and you get paralysis. And they found

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Speaker 1: that if you induced a malarial fever in patients, well

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Speaker 1: that could help with the actual infection. You also saw

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Speaker 1: the use of so called ciphilization treatments. This was where

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Speaker 1: you would essentially try to inoculate the patient in the

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Speaker 1: same way that you would treat them for smallpox. Um,

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Speaker 1: this didn't work. Uh, it's submitting yourself to the disease,

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Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, trying to to build up you know,

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Speaker 1: bodily immunity doesn't work. Now, I've I've read some mixed

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Speaker 1: reports of how experiments on rabbits uh in the modern

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Speaker 1: age have potentially shown some possibility there. But you get

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Speaker 1: into a situation where it would take so many applications

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Speaker 1: of syphilis and and we're talking about a rabbit and

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Speaker 1: it hasn't been studied enough and you would certainly could

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Speaker 1: not study it in humans. So so yeah, and then

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Speaker 1: also why study it when we have penicillin that can

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Speaker 1: wipe it out? And sometimes it's diagnosed by testing fluid

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Speaker 1: from a syphilis sore and looking for the sparrow keet

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Speaker 1: via dark field microscopy. The name of that blood test,

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Speaker 1: by the way, is the Wasserman blood test. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: it was developed in nineteen o six just to get

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Speaker 1: everything in the timeline squared away there so as we

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Speaker 1: had mentioned syphilis can be treated with antibotics, so we're

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Speaker 1: talking about penicillin. We're talking about g venzatine, doxycycline, or tetracycline,

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Speaker 1: and that's for patients who are usually allergic to penicillin.

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Speaker 1: In the length of treatment depends on the extent of

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Speaker 1: the infection and factors such as the person's overall health.

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Speaker 1: So let's say you didn't get to it right away

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Speaker 1: and you kind of get to the second or or

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Speaker 1: have a secondary phase of it, you would still have

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Speaker 1: to deal with any sort of ill effects that you

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Speaker 1: might have sustained at that point. All right, So at

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Speaker 1: this point you might be wondering, what can I do

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Speaker 1: two decrease my chances of catching syphilis. Well, according to

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Speaker 1: the CDC, there basically two things you can do because

386
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Speaker 1: there's no there's no vaccine for syphilis. We have a

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Speaker 1: cure for syphilis. But then again you get into the

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Speaker 1: problem of detecting it, knowing to report it, et cetera. UM.

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Speaker 1: And then even once you've treated syphilis, there's no undoing

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Speaker 1: any damage that it's done. UM. So number one, be

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Speaker 1: a part of a long term, mutually monogamous relationship with

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Speaker 1: a partner who has been tested and has negative STD

393
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Speaker 1: test results. And number two, use latex condoms the right

394
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Speaker 1: way every time you have sex. Condoms prevent transmission of

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Speaker 1: syphilis by preventing contact with a sore. Sometimes sores occurring

396
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Speaker 1: areas not covered by a condom. However, in contact with

397
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Speaker 1: these sores can still transmit syphilis. Because again it's about

398
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Speaker 1: it's it's it's it goes through the skin. It's not

399
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Speaker 1: something that travels through the orifice. Now this might surprise you,

400
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Speaker 1: but the people who really need to hear this most

401
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Speaker 1: besides year olds, are senior citizens. Yes, and this surprised me.

402
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Speaker 1: This was some some some interesting material that you discovered. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we actually a while ago we had someone from the

404
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Speaker 1: CDC come and talk to us about STDs. Not because

405
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Speaker 1: our group needed a talking to but because of the

406
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Speaker 1: cyphilis outbreak at work right now, but because every once

407
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Speaker 1: in a while, as someone will come and and sort

408
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Speaker 1: of give us information and and um, it's always very interesting.

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Speaker 1: And he had mentioned then that retirement communities, assisted living facilities,

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Speaker 1: these are all hotbeds for STDs. And this is in

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Speaker 1: part because they are not practicing safe sex. And also

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Speaker 1: you have to keep in mind that that for a

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Speaker 1: long time, perhaps many of of the community members were

414
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Speaker 1: in long term relationships, but now they probably have lost

415
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Speaker 1: a partner. And it's a very social community. Uh, there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of sex going on with senior citizens in

417
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Speaker 1: these communities. And numbers from the Centers for Disease Control

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Speaker 1: and Prevention show a rapid increase among older people. Were

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Speaker 1: talking about between two thousand and seven and two thousand

420
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Speaker 1: and eleven, clamydium infections among Americans six five and over

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Speaker 1: increased by thirty one and syphilis by fifty two percent. See,

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Speaker 1: I just had I had no idea. I end up

423
00:24:29,359 --> 00:24:32,399
Speaker 1: struggling to try and piece together, like a timeline for

424
00:24:32,440 --> 00:24:37,840
Speaker 1: a hypothetical uh assisted living resident, how they acquire the

425
00:24:37,840 --> 00:24:40,280
Speaker 1: syphilis and then how and then how they end up

426
00:24:40,320 --> 00:24:43,560
Speaker 1: passing it on to multiple people in the facility. They

427
00:24:43,640 --> 00:24:45,960
Speaker 1: just need to get the old posters, you know, in

428
00:24:46,080 --> 00:24:48,240
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties and put them back up. And we'll

429
00:24:48,240 --> 00:24:50,560
Speaker 1: talk more about that in the next episode. But there

430
00:24:50,600 --> 00:24:54,399
Speaker 1: were definite campaigns, uh, you know, trying to get some

431
00:24:54,400 --> 00:24:58,960
Speaker 1: sort of awareness going with Americans about STDs. Indeed, yes,

432
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:01,280
Speaker 1: we'll get into all of that in our next episode

433
00:25:01,520 --> 00:25:05,679
Speaker 1: titled Syphilis through the Ages. Hey, welcome to Stuff to

434
00:25:05,680 --> 00:25:08,760
Speaker 1: blow your mind. My name is Robert lamp and Julie Douglas.

435
00:25:08,800 --> 00:25:12,320
Speaker 1: This is part two of our little series here on syphilis.

436
00:25:12,320 --> 00:25:17,200
Speaker 1: The first episode, Syphilis the Great Imitator, dealt with the

437
00:25:17,200 --> 00:25:19,919
Speaker 1: the organism that causes syphilis stuff which is known as

438
00:25:20,080 --> 00:25:24,399
Speaker 1: Treponema palladum. Actually it's a subspecies of Trepinema palladum. And

439
00:25:24,400 --> 00:25:28,480
Speaker 1: this is all caused by this tiny, tightly coiled spiral key,

440
00:25:28,600 --> 00:25:31,679
Speaker 1: this little bacterium that ends up causing all of this

441
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:34,199
Speaker 1: trouble for those that infected. So if you have not

442
00:25:34,280 --> 00:25:37,560
Speaker 1: listened to that first episode, go back, have a listen.

443
00:25:37,640 --> 00:25:40,240
Speaker 1: We will walk you through all the stages of a

444
00:25:40,240 --> 00:25:44,399
Speaker 1: syphilis infection from that that from the tiny annoyances of

445
00:25:44,440 --> 00:25:48,720
Speaker 1: the primary infection on up to the disastrously deforming and

446
00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:52,639
Speaker 1: ultimately lethal stages of tertiary syphilis, as well as the

447
00:25:52,760 --> 00:25:57,359
Speaker 1: treatment of it. Finally, um alright, this has been mentioned

448
00:25:57,400 --> 00:26:00,240
Speaker 1: in the other episode, but it bears mentioning again. The

449
00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:05,000
Speaker 1: first recorded epidemic of narial syphilis occurred in Europe in

450
00:26:06,600 --> 00:26:09,720
Speaker 1: by the close of the fifteenth century, it was pretty

451
00:26:09,840 --> 00:26:13,879
Speaker 1: rampant in fact, in Naples, Italy, there was such a

452
00:26:13,960 --> 00:26:17,160
Speaker 1: huge outbreak that the pope that said, hey, we need

453
00:26:17,200 --> 00:26:21,640
Speaker 1: some help here. Soldiers were brought in, five thousand of them.

454
00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:24,399
Speaker 1: And what do you think happened, Well, they got to

455
00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:27,679
Speaker 1: the prostitutes and they got more syphilis, and then of

456
00:26:27,720 --> 00:26:30,600
Speaker 1: course they just got worse and worse. So what we're

457
00:26:30,600 --> 00:26:36,000
Speaker 1: talking about is is a disease that ravished for centuries

458
00:26:36,080 --> 00:26:39,640
Speaker 1: throughout Europe, and today we're going to try to get

459
00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:43,840
Speaker 1: at the origins of it, and they're gonna try to

460
00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:47,080
Speaker 1: tease out some of the morality that has been paired

461
00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:50,320
Speaker 1: with it, as well as the sort of xenophobia that

462
00:26:50,560 --> 00:26:53,400
Speaker 1: surrounds it as well. Yeahs, As I mentioned before, it's

463
00:26:53,520 --> 00:26:56,720
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of difficult to overstate the importance of

464
00:26:56,760 --> 00:27:01,080
Speaker 1: syphilis in Western culture for the four and a half

465
00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:04,880
Speaker 1: plus centuries um that it that that it was a problem.

466
00:27:05,320 --> 00:27:07,879
Speaker 1: Um And and as we discussed in the last episode,

467
00:27:07,920 --> 00:27:11,479
Speaker 1: syphilis is not eradicated. It is still around the day.

468
00:27:11,520 --> 00:27:14,600
Speaker 1: It's still something to be concerned about, and it's still

469
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:17,520
Speaker 1: something we have to to treat both with with with

470
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:21,600
Speaker 1: penicillin and with education. But during the fourteenth century to

471
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:25,960
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century, it was really permeating the fabric

472
00:27:26,119 --> 00:27:30,160
Speaker 1: of culture. It was rampant. Yes, when we break down

473
00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:32,320
Speaker 1: the percentages of it, it's going to vary depending on

474
00:27:32,600 --> 00:27:35,159
Speaker 1: where in Europe you're looking, but you're generally looking at

475
00:27:35,240 --> 00:27:39,679
Speaker 1: a ten to fifteen percent of the population has syphilis. Um,

476
00:27:39,800 --> 00:27:42,280
Speaker 1: you know, with some degree uh you know, margin for

477
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:47,879
Speaker 1: air there and then uh upwards of in military because

478
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:51,560
Speaker 1: event you have younger men who are initially traveling around

479
00:27:52,240 --> 00:27:55,320
Speaker 1: and they are the ones that are spreading it from

480
00:27:55,320 --> 00:27:59,320
Speaker 1: place to place, visiting prostitutes, et cetera. Yeah, and because

481
00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:03,280
Speaker 1: of it's association with Columbus, who sailed under the Spanish flag,

482
00:28:03,520 --> 00:28:06,320
Speaker 1: it was called the Spanish disease for a while, and

483
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:10,600
Speaker 1: then the French called it the Neopolitan or Italian disease

484
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:13,760
Speaker 1: because they caught it from residents of Naples, or should

485
00:28:13,760 --> 00:28:15,879
Speaker 1: they say when Naples, of course, was one of the

486
00:28:16,359 --> 00:28:20,800
Speaker 1: major outbreak areas. The Russians called it a Polish disease,

487
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:23,959
Speaker 1: the Polish called it a Russian disease, and the Turks

488
00:28:24,040 --> 00:28:27,720
Speaker 1: called it a Christian disease, while the English called it

489
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:29,639
Speaker 1: the French pox. So what do you see here? A

490
00:28:29,760 --> 00:28:33,119
Speaker 1: lot of finger pointing, Yes, it's always the other that

491
00:28:33,200 --> 00:28:34,920
Speaker 1: you blame the disease, and you have to draw that

492
00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:38,240
Speaker 1: firm line in your worldview between we the clean and

493
00:28:38,360 --> 00:28:40,840
Speaker 1: they the diseased, and hope that that line doesn't come

494
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:44,840
Speaker 1: to envelop you as well. Um, the the Columbus thing

495
00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:47,720
Speaker 1: is so fascinating, and it's a it's a it's a

496
00:28:47,840 --> 00:28:53,000
Speaker 1: point that is continually studied and argued about. But again

497
00:28:53,280 --> 00:28:57,480
Speaker 1: we see that first big outbreak in and as we

498
00:28:57,600 --> 00:29:02,200
Speaker 1: all know, in four Columbus sailed the ocean. So it

499
00:29:02,320 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 1: sounds it sounds almost too good to be true, slash

500
00:29:05,760 --> 00:29:08,360
Speaker 1: too horrible to be treat It almost sounds too easy,

501
00:29:09,200 --> 00:29:11,600
Speaker 1: But but we keep coming back to it at time

502
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:14,640
Speaker 1: and time. Again, here we have Columbus sailing to this

503
00:29:15,320 --> 00:29:21,160
Speaker 1: drastically new land and their contact, be it sexual or

504
00:29:21,280 --> 00:29:25,000
Speaker 1: merely skin on skin is occurring between members of his

505
00:29:25,400 --> 00:29:28,080
Speaker 1: his crew and the native population. And then they return

506
00:29:28,280 --> 00:29:31,600
Speaker 1: to Europe, and then in their wake we see the

507
00:29:31,680 --> 00:29:35,640
Speaker 1: emergence of this, this this powerful illness. Yeah, and you

508
00:29:35,760 --> 00:29:40,160
Speaker 1: see a lot of wrongheaded ideas about this, this idea

509
00:29:40,480 --> 00:29:44,040
Speaker 1: of xenophobia, right, this fear of strangers, this idea that

510
00:29:44,080 --> 00:29:48,720
Speaker 1: there are savages that have uh spread this disease to

511
00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:52,640
Speaker 1: Europeans via Columbus. Yeah, you laid with a member of

512
00:29:52,680 --> 00:29:55,320
Speaker 1: another nation, you laid with a member of another another race.

513
00:29:55,520 --> 00:29:59,760
Speaker 1: All these these weird taboos spring up and seemingly in

514
00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:03,760
Speaker 1: concert with the parameters of the illness. As we mentioned before,

515
00:30:03,840 --> 00:30:06,200
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that syphilis is such a captivating

516
00:30:06,280 --> 00:30:10,520
Speaker 1: topic is because it's so rife for metaphor, you know,

517
00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:18,040
Speaker 1: be it a metaphor of morality, of a metaphor of racism, nationalism, sexism,

518
00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:20,200
Speaker 1: whatever you want to throw at it. It seems to

519
00:30:20,640 --> 00:30:23,720
Speaker 1: conform to that that form rather nicely. Yeah, now we

520
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:26,240
Speaker 1: will get back to Columbus and we're going to try

521
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:29,360
Speaker 1: to get to the origins of of syphilis. But before

522
00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:31,800
Speaker 1: we do, it's just worth it to say that this

523
00:30:32,120 --> 00:30:34,600
Speaker 1: is syphilis. And trying to get to the origins of

524
00:30:34,640 --> 00:30:38,120
Speaker 1: it is really difficult. Um, it's very hard to study.

525
00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:41,760
Speaker 1: There are many strains, some of which don't exist anymore,

526
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:45,920
Speaker 1: and then you have anecdotal claims throughout the centuries, so

527
00:30:46,080 --> 00:30:49,000
Speaker 1: you can't really pair that with, you know, a systematic

528
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:51,960
Speaker 1: approach to say, yes, indeed, this was a case of syphilis.

529
00:30:52,440 --> 00:30:55,560
Speaker 1: Because again, as we have mentioned, before. Syphilis is the

530
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:59,280
Speaker 1: great imitator. So it's very possible that someone had leprosy

531
00:30:59,400 --> 00:31:03,360
Speaker 1: and not syphilis exactly. And and again on that difficult

532
00:31:03,400 --> 00:31:06,680
Speaker 1: to study. Note, you you can't grow syphilis in a culture.

533
00:31:06,800 --> 00:31:09,760
Speaker 1: You can't have a little petrie dish of syphilis. Even today,

534
00:31:09,920 --> 00:31:12,920
Speaker 1: we have to study it in rabbits, so right, you

535
00:31:13,040 --> 00:31:15,480
Speaker 1: have to have it in an actual organism to really

536
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:19,280
Speaker 1: get a good idea about it. That being said, there

537
00:31:19,320 --> 00:31:23,560
Speaker 1: have been these pre Columbian theories kicked around. In other words,

538
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:27,960
Speaker 1: this idea of hey, could syphilis have existed before the

539
00:31:28,040 --> 00:31:32,960
Speaker 1: New World, previous to the late fourteen hundreds in the

540
00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:36,560
Speaker 1: old world. That's again called the pre Columbian theory. Yeah,

541
00:31:36,600 --> 00:31:39,560
Speaker 1: and this this theory is basically that to say that, well,

542
00:31:39,840 --> 00:31:42,160
Speaker 1: when we have other illnesses, and if you look back

543
00:31:42,200 --> 00:31:44,520
Speaker 1: at some accounts of leprosy, you might say, well that

544
00:31:44,720 --> 00:31:46,960
Speaker 1: that account of leprosy doesn't match up as well with

545
00:31:47,080 --> 00:31:50,040
Speaker 1: our modern understanding of leprosy. Perhaps that was a different ailment,

546
00:31:50,280 --> 00:31:53,400
Speaker 1: Perhaps that was in fact syphilis. And instead we're just

547
00:31:53,480 --> 00:31:57,560
Speaker 1: kind of latching onto this easy explanation of Columbus. Since

548
00:31:57,720 --> 00:32:02,360
Speaker 1: this groundbreaking expedition takes place just a few years before

549
00:32:02,440 --> 00:32:06,160
Speaker 1: this major outbreak. But of course the world good because

550
00:32:06,200 --> 00:32:07,800
Speaker 1: I mean it makes sense, right, I mean, the world

551
00:32:08,120 --> 00:32:11,640
Speaker 1: is more complicated than one ship sailing off and coming back.

552
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:14,440
Speaker 1: There are other movements going on in the world. It's

553
00:32:14,480 --> 00:32:18,240
Speaker 1: a time of great change. People are moving around, not

554
00:32:18,400 --> 00:32:22,360
Speaker 1: only throughout Europe, but you have movements going into into

555
00:32:22,520 --> 00:32:25,000
Speaker 1: into Asia and Africa. So what so why not? Why

556
00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 1: why could there not be another route for this illness

557
00:32:28,120 --> 00:32:30,920
Speaker 1: to take? And we'll discuss that, we'll really try to

558
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:32,520
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of this. But so when we

559
00:32:32,600 --> 00:32:35,080
Speaker 1: call when we say pre Columbian, we're talking about Old World.

560
00:32:35,080 --> 00:32:37,400
Speaker 1: When we talk about Columbia and we're talking about New World.

561
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:42,240
Speaker 1: Generally here, old world is Europe, Old world is is

562
00:32:42,320 --> 00:32:46,960
Speaker 1: Western civilization. New World the America's Columbia, etcetera. Right, And

563
00:32:47,040 --> 00:32:49,520
Speaker 1: if you're going to talk about New World, you have

564
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:52,560
Speaker 1: to talk about something called yaws and facial Now, these

565
00:32:52,600 --> 00:32:57,840
Speaker 1: are tropical diseases that are closely related to Troponema palladum,

566
00:32:57,920 --> 00:33:02,520
Speaker 1: which is of course syphilis, although they are different. Bagel

567
00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:06,840
Speaker 1: causes mouth stores and lumps in the bone, and yaws

568
00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:10,520
Speaker 1: caused skin stores and disfiguring growths on the legs. So

569
00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:14,200
Speaker 1: of course they're they're related to syphilis, but they are

570
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:17,840
Speaker 1: non venereal, right, they're spread through skin to skin contact,

571
00:33:17,920 --> 00:33:21,440
Speaker 1: They're not. They're they're not straight up venereal diseases. Um.

572
00:33:21,560 --> 00:33:23,560
Speaker 1: You know, granted you could catch them in skin to

573
00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:27,240
Speaker 1: skin contact during sexual intercourse, but they're not depending on

574
00:33:27,360 --> 00:33:30,080
Speaker 1: that as their mode of transmission. Yeah, but these are

575
00:33:30,120 --> 00:33:31,959
Speaker 1: all trimp and emial diseases that are These are all

576
00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:37,640
Speaker 1: close relatives of the subspecies of Trimpanema pallatum that causes syphilis.

577
00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:40,320
Speaker 1: And we bring them up because they're important to study

578
00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:43,320
Speaker 1: if you're if you're trying to look at where cyphilis,

579
00:33:43,360 --> 00:33:46,240
Speaker 1: syphilis originated from, then you're gonna want to look at

580
00:33:46,440 --> 00:33:51,960
Speaker 1: yaws and basil because paleo pathologists Bruce and Christine Rothschild

581
00:33:52,360 --> 00:33:56,959
Speaker 1: use that information to point toward a new world origin

582
00:33:57,200 --> 00:34:01,920
Speaker 1: of syphilis. And they examined six eighties seven skeletons from

583
00:34:02,040 --> 00:34:06,680
Speaker 1: archaeological sites in the US. We're talking about arranging an

584
00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:09,680
Speaker 1: age from four hundred to six thousand years and what

585
00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:12,239
Speaker 1: they found is that populations to the south look to

586
00:34:12,320 --> 00:34:16,320
Speaker 1: have syphilis while those to the north had yaws. And

587
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:22,279
Speaker 1: then by contrast, they examined one thousand Old World skeletons

588
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:25,799
Speaker 1: dating to before contact with the New World, and they

589
00:34:25,840 --> 00:34:30,960
Speaker 1: found zero cases of syphilis. So this kind of gets

590
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:34,560
Speaker 1: you onto the route of, well, maybe the New World

591
00:34:34,840 --> 00:34:38,120
Speaker 1: did have the case of syphilis, although it's not that

592
00:34:38,640 --> 00:34:41,279
Speaker 1: clear cut, as well discussed, and this leads us to

593
00:34:41,800 --> 00:34:44,800
Speaker 1: what is called the Unitarian hypothesis, which has nothing to

594
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:48,160
Speaker 1: do with unitarians in the religious sense of the world,

595
00:34:48,239 --> 00:34:50,640
Speaker 1: where don't worry, unitarians, We're not We're not nailing this

596
00:34:50,680 --> 00:34:52,880
Speaker 1: one on you. Unitarian in the sense of that that

597
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:57,240
Speaker 1: it unites the Old World and New World hypotheses regarding

598
00:34:57,560 --> 00:35:01,239
Speaker 1: the emergence of syphilis in Europe. The basic idea here

599
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:04,600
Speaker 1: is that you do have Columbus and New sailors setting

600
00:35:04,640 --> 00:35:07,560
Speaker 1: sail from Europe to the New World to the America's

601
00:35:07,920 --> 00:35:09,920
Speaker 1: and when they're there, they do come into skin to

602
00:35:09,960 --> 00:35:14,759
Speaker 1: skin contact sexual and non sexual with natives there, and

603
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:19,839
Speaker 1: then they end up acquiring trimpanemal diseases. Now you know, again,

604
00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:22,319
Speaker 1: think to the jewel, think to to tin, to think

605
00:35:22,360 --> 00:35:26,120
Speaker 1: to yaws, but not necessarily syphilis proper. But they bring

606
00:35:26,200 --> 00:35:28,439
Speaker 1: back a relative of syphilis and they bring it back

607
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:33,440
Speaker 1: to a drastically new incubation world. We're talking about a

608
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:36,520
Speaker 1: different environment because in the in the America's uh, you know,

609
00:35:36,800 --> 00:35:40,600
Speaker 1: individuals syphilis they're gonna largely be in you know, smaller communities.

610
00:35:40,960 --> 00:35:43,319
Speaker 1: But then you bring them to a European port town.

611
00:35:43,960 --> 00:35:46,160
Speaker 1: You bring it to a world where individuals are wearing

612
00:35:46,239 --> 00:35:50,680
Speaker 1: more clothes, thus allowing for less skin on skin contact.

613
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:52,880
Speaker 1: You're bringing it to a world where you have brothels,

614
00:35:52,920 --> 00:35:55,880
Speaker 1: a world where you have tiny ships tightly packed with

615
00:35:56,040 --> 00:35:59,120
Speaker 1: men sailing from one port to the next port throughout Europe.

616
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:04,040
Speaker 1: And what happens, according to this hypothesis is that the

617
00:36:04,840 --> 00:36:09,560
Speaker 1: the tremponamal disease changes and and we get this subspecies

618
00:36:09,640 --> 00:36:13,000
Speaker 1: of Tremponema palladum that causes syphilis as we know it.

619
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:17,560
Speaker 1: So it is a story of mutation under new environmental circumstances. Yeah,

620
00:36:17,600 --> 00:36:21,200
Speaker 1: if anyone is interested in taking a deeper dive into

621
00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:25,000
Speaker 1: this and and some of the skeletal evidence behind this,

622
00:36:25,239 --> 00:36:27,440
Speaker 1: there is a paper two thousand and toll paper called

623
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:30,680
Speaker 1: the science behind pre Columbian evidence of Syphilis and Europe

624
00:36:30,719 --> 00:36:35,399
Speaker 1: Research by Documentary and that goes into this, uh much more.

625
00:36:35,560 --> 00:36:38,520
Speaker 1: And I wanted to quote Molly Zuckerman. She's one of

626
00:36:38,560 --> 00:36:41,480
Speaker 1: the authors of paper, and she says, in reality, it

627
00:36:41,560 --> 00:36:45,440
Speaker 1: appears that venereal syphilis was the byproduct of two different

628
00:36:45,520 --> 00:36:50,560
Speaker 1: populations meeting and exchanging a pathogen. It was an adaptive event,

629
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:56,359
Speaker 1: the natural selection of a disease, independent of morality or blame. Yeah,

630
00:36:56,560 --> 00:36:59,480
Speaker 1: it's not as situation of, Ah, those sinful sailors are

631
00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:03,239
Speaker 1: all those diseased natives in this new world. It's it's

632
00:37:03,280 --> 00:37:07,480
Speaker 1: something more complicated than that. Yeah. And you know, at

633
00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:10,680
Speaker 1: the outset of this, the researchers for those paper, they

634
00:37:10,800 --> 00:37:14,600
Speaker 1: really wanted to to sort of disprove this idea that

635
00:37:14,800 --> 00:37:19,560
Speaker 1: Columbus and his crew were vectors for syphilis, because I thought,

636
00:37:19,600 --> 00:37:22,120
Speaker 1: it can't be that just you know, Columbus and his

637
00:37:22,520 --> 00:37:25,759
Speaker 1: his guys hung out in America and then brought it

638
00:37:25,960 --> 00:37:28,719
Speaker 1: back to Europe and spread syphilis all over the place.

639
00:37:28,800 --> 00:37:32,680
Speaker 1: Can't be that simple. And it's not that simple, um,

640
00:37:32,880 --> 00:37:35,480
Speaker 1: you know, because the trick here is that it mutated,

641
00:37:35,600 --> 00:37:40,200
Speaker 1: it adapted rather um. But they really they went into

642
00:37:40,280 --> 00:37:43,200
Speaker 1: it with the intent of saying, nah, it can't be yeah,

643
00:37:43,239 --> 00:37:45,520
Speaker 1: because it does sound like something you would read and

644
00:37:45,640 --> 00:37:49,319
Speaker 1: sort of conspiracy theory kind of message board, right, like, well,

645
00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:52,120
Speaker 1: these two dates line up, we can correlate this a

646
00:37:52,160 --> 00:37:55,239
Speaker 1: little bit. Therefore that must be what happened. Um. Now,

647
00:37:55,400 --> 00:37:57,439
Speaker 1: you know, we do want to drive home that these

648
00:37:57,480 --> 00:38:00,680
Speaker 1: are all hypotheses and that this is own area that

649
00:38:00,760 --> 00:38:02,719
Speaker 1: everyone that there are a lot of papers that come

650
00:38:02,719 --> 00:38:04,440
Speaker 1: out about this. There's a lot of discussion, a lot

651
00:38:04,440 --> 00:38:06,640
Speaker 1: of argument, loss did, a lot of disagreement. So there's

652
00:38:06,640 --> 00:38:09,120
Speaker 1: no definitive answer here, and it may indeed be one

653
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:11,160
Speaker 1: of those areas where we never have a definitive answer.

654
00:38:11,920 --> 00:38:15,560
Speaker 1: It's true. And uh, you know that the researchers who

655
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:17,799
Speaker 1: worked on that paper also worked on some of them

656
00:38:18,000 --> 00:38:21,000
Speaker 1: worked on a different paper looking at fifty four published

657
00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:27,000
Speaker 1: reports of pre Columbian evidence and skeletal remains of syphilis,

658
00:38:27,120 --> 00:38:30,759
Speaker 1: and they found there that again there wasn't enough supporting

659
00:38:31,440 --> 00:38:36,520
Speaker 1: information and real evidence to say that it existed in

660
00:38:36,640 --> 00:38:40,000
Speaker 1: its form of syphilis as we know and talk about

661
00:38:40,000 --> 00:38:43,440
Speaker 1: it now in the old world. So again, there seems

662
00:38:43,480 --> 00:38:46,480
Speaker 1: to be some sort of direction here in terms of

663
00:38:46,680 --> 00:38:49,400
Speaker 1: the way that the river is streaming with information, but

664
00:38:49,520 --> 00:38:52,640
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that this is the endpoint of the

665
00:38:52,760 --> 00:38:55,680
Speaker 1: origins of syphilis. And we're going to talk about more

666
00:38:55,719 --> 00:38:58,120
Speaker 1: of the sort of sights and sounds and smells of

667
00:38:58,320 --> 00:39:03,960
Speaker 1: what it might be like in a syphilitic era in Europe.

668
00:39:04,160 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 1: And uh, I wanted to just read this. This is

669
00:39:07,160 --> 00:39:11,440
Speaker 1: from the BBC, A Cultural History of Syphilis, says in

670
00:39:11,520 --> 00:39:14,920
Speaker 1: the fourteen nineties, and apparently new and terrifying disease struck

671
00:39:15,040 --> 00:39:18,760
Speaker 1: naples in southern Italy and swept fire like across Europe,

672
00:39:18,960 --> 00:39:23,120
Speaker 1: reaping a dreadful human cost. It must have been as

673
00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:26,840
Speaker 1: though Hell had come to earth. Pustules spread across the

674
00:39:26,920 --> 00:39:31,040
Speaker 1: genitals and the face of its many sufferers. Unbearable gastro

675
00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:37,680
Speaker 1: intestinal pain followed upon fevers, screamingly severe headaches and other symptoms. Finally,

676
00:39:38,120 --> 00:39:42,520
Speaker 1: flush fell from bones. Syphilis had arrived in Europe, where

677
00:39:42,520 --> 00:39:45,880
Speaker 1: it would stay misunderstood, lacking any form of cure for

678
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:50,839
Speaker 1: nearly five years. Yeah, that's that's pretty rough sounding. Um.

679
00:39:50,960 --> 00:39:53,680
Speaker 1: And again, remember that this was not a disease that

680
00:39:53,760 --> 00:39:57,000
Speaker 1: affected just the poor. This was a disease that affected

681
00:39:57,360 --> 00:40:00,640
Speaker 1: rich and poor alike, that affected royalty and peasant, that

682
00:40:00,719 --> 00:40:04,120
Speaker 1: affected clergy members, anyone that was engaging in sexual contact.

683
00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:08,359
Speaker 1: Uh ran the risk a high risk of acquiring uh,

684
00:40:08,480 --> 00:40:11,640
Speaker 1: this this illness. And yeah, this was not a quiet

685
00:40:12,120 --> 00:40:14,800
Speaker 1: sort of illness. I mean, people could smell you before

686
00:40:14,800 --> 00:40:17,080
Speaker 1: you even came around. And we're talking about rotting flesh.

687
00:40:17,160 --> 00:40:21,360
Speaker 1: We are talking about your face bearing the marks of syphilis,

688
00:40:21,440 --> 00:40:23,640
Speaker 1: your body bearing the marks of it. In fact, you

689
00:40:23,719 --> 00:40:25,520
Speaker 1: could even kind of see it as a sort of

690
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:32,200
Speaker 1: scarlet letter a brought into your flesh. Yeah. Again, the

691
00:40:32,640 --> 00:40:36,560
Speaker 1: metaphorical power of syphilis is unavoidable here because you already

692
00:40:36,600 --> 00:40:40,480
Speaker 1: have the idea, uh, in Western culture, that that physical

693
00:40:40,560 --> 00:40:46,359
Speaker 1: deformities may signal inner deformities, that that that that an

694
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:51,760
Speaker 1: inner sin can have a fleshly manifestation. And it's super

695
00:40:51,840 --> 00:40:54,399
Speaker 1: easy to apply that line of thinking to syphilis, because

696
00:40:54,440 --> 00:40:56,919
Speaker 1: here's something that spread through sex. Here is something that's

697
00:40:56,920 --> 00:41:00,920
Speaker 1: spread through uh through sin, if you will, and and

698
00:41:01,040 --> 00:41:05,960
Speaker 1: then has these these terrifying physical um manifestations, certainly in

699
00:41:06,040 --> 00:41:09,480
Speaker 1: its later stages. So it's it's easy then for someone

700
00:41:09,560 --> 00:41:12,080
Speaker 1: to point the figure and say this, this is the way.

701
00:41:12,200 --> 00:41:14,160
Speaker 1: These are the wages of sin right here. All you

702
00:41:14,200 --> 00:41:16,359
Speaker 1: have to do is look at this individual, look at

703
00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:18,920
Speaker 1: the look at the sores on their body, look at

704
00:41:18,960 --> 00:41:22,000
Speaker 1: the deformities of their facial feature, look what has happened

705
00:41:22,040 --> 00:41:24,400
Speaker 1: to them? Uh, And and so you see this just

706
00:41:24,520 --> 00:41:27,680
Speaker 1: throughout it, So throughout its four and a half centuries

707
00:41:28,000 --> 00:41:32,400
Speaker 1: of unchecked rampaging, and even beyond into the twentieth century

708
00:41:32,440 --> 00:41:35,680
Speaker 1: and even into the twenty one there's there's a moral

709
00:41:35,800 --> 00:41:39,440
Speaker 1: aspect to syphilis and to other venereal diseases. This is

710
00:41:39,520 --> 00:41:42,760
Speaker 1: something you caught because you were doing something that was wrong.

711
00:41:42,920 --> 00:41:47,520
Speaker 1: Like that's the script that is often applied to the scenario. Yeah,

712
00:41:47,719 --> 00:41:51,920
Speaker 1: and now people have the sort of calling card hallmarks

713
00:41:52,120 --> 00:41:55,080
Speaker 1: of that disease. Right. They look at you and they say, oh,

714
00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 1: let me see you've you've got a nasty rash there,

715
00:41:59,760 --> 00:42:04,319
Speaker 1: you lost your hair um, perhaps your nose is even

716
00:42:04,760 --> 00:42:07,920
Speaker 1: caving in into what's called saddle nose. And so what

717
00:42:08,120 --> 00:42:11,440
Speaker 1: do people do, Well, they try to find anything and

718
00:42:11,680 --> 00:42:15,600
Speaker 1: everything that might cover up their transgressions or what would

719
00:42:15,600 --> 00:42:18,239
Speaker 1: be perceived as transgressions. Right, And bear in mind again

720
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:20,160
Speaker 1: through all of this, that there are no set of

721
00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:24,360
Speaker 1: standard symptoms for syphilis, and there are stages where it's undetectable.

722
00:42:24,719 --> 00:42:28,600
Speaker 1: So so every everyone's going crazy with ways to detect

723
00:42:28,640 --> 00:42:32,440
Speaker 1: and treat it. While the illness itself is is so

724
00:42:32,640 --> 00:42:35,480
Speaker 1: difficult to get your hands on. It's the great imitator,

725
00:42:35,560 --> 00:42:40,319
Speaker 1: it's the it's the great hider um. So yeah, bad

726
00:42:40,400 --> 00:42:43,239
Speaker 1: stuff is happening to your body in in the varying

727
00:42:43,280 --> 00:42:46,360
Speaker 1: stages of syphilis. So one thing you might do is,

728
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:48,680
Speaker 1: of course, you may cover things up. Since we were

729
00:42:48,719 --> 00:42:51,320
Speaker 1: wearing clothes, we're wearing makeup. You can apply clothing and

730
00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:55,320
Speaker 1: makeup to cover up your source. Yeah. In fact, syphilis

731
00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:58,759
Speaker 1: just creates this whole cottage industry of of different things

732
00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:01,520
Speaker 1: you can buy and do to either feel better or

733
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:04,720
Speaker 1: look better. So there might be some sort of snake

734
00:43:04,840 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 1: oil that you can buy right that has absolutely no

735
00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:11,320
Speaker 1: medical merit. Or you might visit your local wig maker

736
00:43:11,600 --> 00:43:14,000
Speaker 1: quite a bit, because again you want to cover up

737
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:17,200
Speaker 1: the bald patch on your head or the baldness so

738
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:20,399
Speaker 1: that people don't suspect that you have syphilis. And if

739
00:43:20,480 --> 00:43:25,000
Speaker 1: you are a prostitute, American is a must, because yeah,

740
00:43:25,040 --> 00:43:26,600
Speaker 1: you might be saving your pubic care any way to

741
00:43:26,640 --> 00:43:29,080
Speaker 1: cut down on lights, but then you also might have

742
00:43:29,760 --> 00:43:32,400
Speaker 1: an outbreak of syphilis down there. You want to disguise

743
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:35,600
Speaker 1: the signs, so you get a wig for your genitals,

744
00:43:35,920 --> 00:43:40,279
Speaker 1: also called American, which is not a Muppet character. Yeah,

745
00:43:40,320 --> 00:43:43,640
Speaker 1: they apparently used a lot now in for films, especially

746
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:48,439
Speaker 1: historical films. Yeah, but historically it was more a matter

747
00:43:48,560 --> 00:43:52,160
Speaker 1: of venereal diseases for the men. Generally wasn't really an

748
00:43:52,200 --> 00:43:55,920
Speaker 1: option because the well there's just more to cover up

749
00:43:55,960 --> 00:43:58,719
Speaker 1: down there, and uh, just do a Google immed search,

750
00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:01,319
Speaker 1: she'll see what I'm talking about. All right, Yeah, there

751
00:44:01,360 --> 00:44:04,560
Speaker 1: are some logisticks there that you can't quite uh cover

752
00:44:04,719 --> 00:44:09,440
Speaker 1: with American But what happens when your nose caves in

753
00:44:09,840 --> 00:44:12,920
Speaker 1: and your flesh begins to rot away, Well, h this

754
00:44:13,080 --> 00:44:15,800
Speaker 1: creates a problem. And in general it was kind of

755
00:44:15,840 --> 00:44:18,520
Speaker 1: a rough time for noses anyway. If you remember the

756
00:44:18,600 --> 00:44:22,040
Speaker 1: story of Tico Brahy, the the astronomer, I think we

757
00:44:22,120 --> 00:44:23,839
Speaker 1: did an episode on him, or at least he's come

758
00:44:23,880 --> 00:44:28,040
Speaker 1: he comes up a time. Yeah, yeah, fascinating individual. Um.

759
00:44:28,960 --> 00:44:32,520
Speaker 1: There may be some biographers that that creep syphilis in there,

760
00:44:32,520 --> 00:44:34,840
Speaker 1: but but I think it's pretty established that that he

761
00:44:34,920 --> 00:44:37,520
Speaker 1: lost the nose in a duel. So on on one level,

762
00:44:37,600 --> 00:44:40,080
Speaker 1: you can lose that nose in a duel living an

763
00:44:40,080 --> 00:44:43,880
Speaker 1: adventurous lifestyle, getting yourselves into arguments with other armed a gentleman.

764
00:44:44,280 --> 00:44:48,200
Speaker 1: But you can also acquire sephilis through your adventurous lifestyle.

765
00:44:48,480 --> 00:44:50,600
Speaker 1: And then you see the saddle nose, the eventual rotting

766
00:44:50,600 --> 00:44:52,719
Speaker 1: away of the nose. So one thing you can do

767
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:55,479
Speaker 1: is you can buy a fake nose to where over

768
00:44:56,000 --> 00:44:59,719
Speaker 1: your destroyed nose. And this is this is as simple

769
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:01,800
Speaker 1: as its ounds. If you've ever seen a digital underground

770
00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:04,080
Speaker 1: video and you've seen Humpty Hump with the big fake

771
00:45:04,160 --> 00:45:07,520
Speaker 1: nos on his on his face, who incidentally, according to

772
00:45:07,600 --> 00:45:10,920
Speaker 1: the backstory, lost it in a frying accident, I believe so,

773
00:45:11,360 --> 00:45:15,160
Speaker 1: so no dueling or syphilis involved with Humpty. But but

774
00:45:15,239 --> 00:45:18,320
Speaker 1: it's basically the same scenario, a fake NOS that is

775
00:45:18,520 --> 00:45:22,520
Speaker 1: strapped onto the body or held with wires over the

776
00:45:22,840 --> 00:45:27,840
Speaker 1: over the the the vacant area. Yeah, in fact, and

777
00:45:27,920 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 1: this is according to Lindsay fitz Harris, who is a

778
00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:36,360
Speaker 1: medical historian and writes on the Chiujian Apprentice, which is

779
00:45:36,400 --> 00:45:41,160
Speaker 1: a great website documenting medical surgeries. She writes that this

780
00:45:41,320 --> 00:45:44,240
Speaker 1: deformity was so common amongst these suffering from the pots,

781
00:45:44,320 --> 00:45:48,320
Speaker 1: as it was sometimes called, that no nose clubs sprung

782
00:45:48,440 --> 00:45:52,839
Speaker 1: up in London. On February eighteen seventy four, The Star

783
00:45:52,960 --> 00:45:57,120
Speaker 1: reported Miss Sanborn tells us that an eccentric gentleman, having

784
00:45:57,200 --> 00:45:59,759
Speaker 1: taken taken a fancy to see a large party of

785
00:46:00,040 --> 00:46:04,480
Speaker 1: noseless persons, invited everyone thus afflicted whom he met in

786
00:46:04,560 --> 00:46:06,600
Speaker 1: the streets to dine on a certain day at a

787
00:46:06,640 --> 00:46:11,080
Speaker 1: tavern where he formed them into a brotherhood. And on

788
00:46:11,239 --> 00:46:15,440
Speaker 1: this site again that Lindsay fitz Harris has put together,

789
00:46:15,840 --> 00:46:19,120
Speaker 1: there is a great example of one of these sort

790
00:46:19,160 --> 00:46:24,359
Speaker 1: of noses that's attached to a pair of glasses, that's

791
00:46:24,360 --> 00:46:27,000
Speaker 1: attached to a sort of almost looks like a headgear,

792
00:46:27,200 --> 00:46:33,120
Speaker 1: like early headgear braces. And it's one that that a

793
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:35,919
Speaker 1: female patient war Yeah, and you can imagine that worn

794
00:46:35,960 --> 00:46:38,520
Speaker 1: with a wig, and it makes makes perfect sense. And

795
00:46:38,680 --> 00:46:41,480
Speaker 1: you know, the no Nose Club also makes a lot

796
00:46:41,520 --> 00:46:43,960
Speaker 1: of sense because if you're you're dealing with this illness,

797
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 1: you're having to cover yourself up and where this this

798
00:46:46,840 --> 00:46:50,279
Speaker 1: this fake nose over your your your face. I mean,

799
00:46:50,480 --> 00:46:52,000
Speaker 1: there's gonna come a time when you want to be

800
00:46:52,040 --> 00:46:55,440
Speaker 1: able to just take that off and be yourself, no

801
00:46:55,600 --> 00:46:58,800
Speaker 1: matter what has happened to yourself in this illness. You

802
00:46:58,840 --> 00:47:00,520
Speaker 1: want to be able to just say, hey, here we are.

803
00:47:01,360 --> 00:47:04,040
Speaker 1: We may not have noses anymore because of this illness,

804
00:47:04,120 --> 00:47:07,160
Speaker 1: but hey, we're people, and we want to look at

805
00:47:07,200 --> 00:47:09,319
Speaker 1: each other like we're people and and not worry about

806
00:47:09,320 --> 00:47:11,880
Speaker 1: oh whatsever and all these other people that don't have syphilis,

807
00:47:12,080 --> 00:47:14,240
Speaker 1: or don't realize they have syphilis, or in other stages

808
00:47:14,239 --> 00:47:16,400
Speaker 1: of the illness are looking at me and judging me

809
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:19,400
Speaker 1: for for what I am, and making judgments about my

810
00:47:19,480 --> 00:47:22,600
Speaker 1: moral character based on what has happened. Well, and fitz

811
00:47:22,640 --> 00:47:25,719
Speaker 1: Harris has that blog post Syphilis a Love Story which

812
00:47:25,800 --> 00:47:28,000
Speaker 1: essentially talks about this, and I believe it is miss

813
00:47:28,080 --> 00:47:32,680
Speaker 1: Sanborne who eventually takes the fake nose off at her

814
00:47:32,719 --> 00:47:36,560
Speaker 1: husband's request because he accepts her as she is. You know,

815
00:47:36,600 --> 00:47:38,560
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I was listening to that to BBC program,

816
00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:42,120
Speaker 1: the Cultural History of Syphilis, which I'll link to on

817
00:47:42,239 --> 00:47:46,040
Speaker 1: the landing page for this podcast episode. But they go

818
00:47:46,239 --> 00:47:50,440
Speaker 1: into some of the cases of individuals, particularly in the

819
00:47:50,920 --> 00:47:56,040
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, who end up, if not finding pride in

820
00:47:56,200 --> 00:47:59,000
Speaker 1: their syphilitic appearance, they at least, you know, come to

821
00:47:59,080 --> 00:48:02,440
Speaker 1: own it. Uh. You see individuals like Sir William davenant

822
00:48:02,880 --> 00:48:07,400
Speaker 1: Um sixteen o six through sixteen sixty eight as a poet, playwright,

823
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:11,120
Speaker 1: and he was famously not shy about being painted or

824
00:48:11,160 --> 00:48:13,879
Speaker 1: depicted in artwork without a false nose. So you see

825
00:48:13,920 --> 00:48:18,120
Speaker 1: a very sunken saddle nose, you know, almost a vacant um,

826
00:48:18,280 --> 00:48:20,719
Speaker 1: you know, part of his facial features. And he was,

827
00:48:20,840 --> 00:48:23,640
Speaker 1: you know, pretty upfront about it. Um. Another instance, you

828
00:48:23,760 --> 00:48:28,840
Speaker 1: have artist Gerard Delorice one through seventeen eleven, who was

829
00:48:28,880 --> 00:48:32,640
Speaker 1: actually a prominent painter. Uh and uh and he was

830
00:48:32,719 --> 00:48:36,160
Speaker 1: born with congenital syphilis. Um. And he he was. There's

831
00:48:36,160 --> 00:48:39,399
Speaker 1: actually a painting of him by Rembrandt, which I'll put

832
00:48:39,440 --> 00:48:41,920
Speaker 1: on the blog for everyone to see because it's it's

833
00:48:41,960 --> 00:48:45,080
Speaker 1: a it's a Rembrandt piece, so it's it's splendid to behold.

834
00:48:45,480 --> 00:48:47,279
Speaker 1: But here's an individual who you know, he's setting for

835
00:48:47,360 --> 00:48:50,280
Speaker 1: a portrait. He's he's he's open and uh and free

836
00:48:50,400 --> 00:48:53,160
Speaker 1: about who he is. You know, he's not trying to

837
00:48:53,239 --> 00:48:55,879
Speaker 1: hide it at this point. And you see a number

838
00:48:55,880 --> 00:49:00,400
Speaker 1: of individuals say um, John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester,

839
00:49:00,560 --> 00:49:04,640
Speaker 1: who was portrayed by Johnny Depp in the movie of Libertine. Um.

840
00:49:05,280 --> 00:49:08,200
Speaker 1: You see individuals like this who basically say, yeah, I

841
00:49:08,280 --> 00:49:12,840
Speaker 1: have syphilis, I have had a wildlife and the wages

842
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:15,240
Speaker 1: of having that wildlife are syphilis. So it's it's almost

843
00:49:15,280 --> 00:49:17,800
Speaker 1: like a badge of honor. Yeah, it's like when you

844
00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:21,320
Speaker 1: hear I've heard people say point at rock stars aging

845
00:49:21,440 --> 00:49:23,520
Speaker 1: rock stars, and you know, say, oh, they look rough,

846
00:49:24,080 --> 00:49:26,680
Speaker 1: but they partied hard to get there, you know, to

847
00:49:26,760 --> 00:49:29,520
Speaker 1: say that, you know, what has happened to them is

848
00:49:30,200 --> 00:49:32,120
Speaker 1: like a badge of honor because it says they have

849
00:49:32,360 --> 00:49:35,719
Speaker 1: enjoyed their younger life and that is why, uh, their

850
00:49:35,880 --> 00:49:39,080
Speaker 1: their older form is so decrepit. And that's what you're

851
00:49:39,120 --> 00:49:41,000
Speaker 1: seeing in some of these individuals. Now, granted, these are

852
00:49:41,040 --> 00:49:43,680
Speaker 1: individuals that we're living at the in the upper echelon

853
00:49:43,800 --> 00:49:47,040
Speaker 1: of society, so they had a little more room too,

854
00:49:48,160 --> 00:49:49,960
Speaker 1: you know, to grab onto that pride. They weren't dying

855
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:53,640
Speaker 1: of syphilis, uh, you know, in the slums. And likewise,

856
00:49:53,680 --> 00:49:57,600
Speaker 1: some of these individuals too also had taken to various

857
00:49:57,960 --> 00:50:00,320
Speaker 1: um ideas about how syphilis could beach read it. So

858
00:50:00,360 --> 00:50:03,160
Speaker 1: they thought that perhaps their their syphilis was being treated

859
00:50:03,600 --> 00:50:06,759
Speaker 1: and managed by regular mercury treatments in one of those

860
00:50:06,840 --> 00:50:10,600
Speaker 1: mercury steam baths, which, as we mentioned in the previous episode,

861
00:50:10,680 --> 00:50:14,560
Speaker 1: may you know, was was likely making their symptoms worse.

862
00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:17,719
Speaker 1: In some cases, so they thought that a they were

863
00:50:17,960 --> 00:50:21,640
Speaker 1: above sort of some of the social rules in place

864
00:50:21,840 --> 00:50:25,120
Speaker 1: because of their position and society, and be that they

865
00:50:25,239 --> 00:50:30,000
Speaker 1: might have been vanquishing it. So they were uh, not

866
00:50:30,239 --> 00:50:33,160
Speaker 1: quite as concerned about how they looked. Perhaps, Yeah, and

867
00:50:33,239 --> 00:50:34,880
Speaker 1: if you're take and if you're looking at the body

868
00:50:35,000 --> 00:50:37,640
Speaker 1: from a less religious standpoint, and you're looking at more

869
00:50:37,719 --> 00:50:41,520
Speaker 1: from a hedonistic or even mechanical standpoint, you then you're saying, hey,

870
00:50:42,040 --> 00:50:45,560
Speaker 1: I live in a world in which syphilis exists, and

871
00:50:45,680 --> 00:50:48,120
Speaker 1: if I behave a certain way, syphilis is what happens

872
00:50:48,160 --> 00:50:51,200
Speaker 1: to my body. You know. Um, some of these cases too,

873
00:50:51,200 --> 00:50:54,480
Speaker 1: you see individuals where they they're they're they're almost happy

874
00:50:54,640 --> 00:50:58,399
Speaker 1: when they finally catch syphilis because it means, if nothing else,

875
00:50:58,480 --> 00:51:01,000
Speaker 1: it means they don't have to worry about syphilis anymore.

876
00:51:01,200 --> 00:51:04,480
Speaker 1: You know. They're they're they're no longer living in the

877
00:51:04,560 --> 00:51:07,960
Speaker 1: shadow of syphilis, but within the dark of syphilis. And

878
00:51:09,200 --> 00:51:10,960
Speaker 1: you can see where there might be a certain amount

879
00:51:10,960 --> 00:51:13,279
Speaker 1: of empowerment there. Certainly, if you have to latch onto something,

880
00:51:13,360 --> 00:51:15,239
Speaker 1: you might as well latch onto that, although again you'd

881
00:51:15,239 --> 00:51:18,719
Speaker 1: have to be in a really specific social position to

882
00:51:18,840 --> 00:51:22,160
Speaker 1: do that, and you'd have to be a male for certain. No. Yes, indeed, now,

883
00:51:22,560 --> 00:51:25,440
Speaker 1: if you had the money, the wherewithal, and you did

884
00:51:25,560 --> 00:51:29,040
Speaker 1: not want to wear a fake nose, or you weren't

885
00:51:29,040 --> 00:51:31,080
Speaker 1: ready to come out to the world that you had syphilis,

886
00:51:31,200 --> 00:51:35,120
Speaker 1: then you would try a kind of nasal reconstruction, which

887
00:51:35,280 --> 00:51:39,320
Speaker 1: in the sixteenth century was called the Indian method, and

888
00:51:39,480 --> 00:51:43,239
Speaker 1: this involved cutting a nose sized section of skin from

889
00:51:43,320 --> 00:51:48,080
Speaker 1: the forehead. So there's again another calling card or hallmark

890
00:51:48,200 --> 00:51:50,520
Speaker 1: that you have the disease, because your nose looks great,

891
00:51:50,600 --> 00:51:52,560
Speaker 1: but you've got a big patch of skins, but you

892
00:51:52,640 --> 00:51:56,520
Speaker 1: have a really big wig. That that's true. That's true,

893
00:51:56,760 --> 00:51:59,359
Speaker 1: you have a nice wig. But they take that skin

894
00:51:59,480 --> 00:52:01,040
Speaker 1: from the foe and they would attach it to the

895
00:52:01,080 --> 00:52:04,040
Speaker 1: bridge of the nose to maintain a steady blood supply.

896
00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:08,160
Speaker 1: And then that flap was twisted into place and sewn

897
00:52:08,320 --> 00:52:12,200
Speaker 1: over the damaged area, which kind of created a replacement nose.

898
00:52:13,280 --> 00:52:17,400
Speaker 1: But again it wasn't perfect, and you know, really cold weather,

899
00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:19,879
Speaker 1: it would not turn the same color as the rest

900
00:52:19,880 --> 00:52:22,680
Speaker 1: of your nose. So there were certain telltale signs that

901
00:52:23,160 --> 00:52:25,960
Speaker 1: it may look like an intech nose, but it is not.

902
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:30,200
Speaker 1: Your perhaps knows that you are born with. But it

903
00:52:30,239 --> 00:52:33,719
Speaker 1: turns out that there's a better and perhaps more horrific

904
00:52:33,880 --> 00:52:37,839
Speaker 1: way to take a stab at plastic surgery or early

905
00:52:37,880 --> 00:52:40,399
Speaker 1: plastic surgery. You know what. It is tempting to say

906
00:52:40,480 --> 00:52:43,480
Speaker 1: it's horrific, but it but in another way, it's kind

907
00:52:43,480 --> 00:52:45,960
Speaker 1: of beautiful and it gets it how malleable our flesh

908
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:50,239
Speaker 1: really is because again modern plastic surgery, the plastic is

909
00:52:50,280 --> 00:52:52,640
Speaker 1: referring to the plasticity of the flesh, that you can

910
00:52:52,719 --> 00:52:56,000
Speaker 1: craft flesh into a form. Yeah. And actually this method

911
00:52:56,600 --> 00:53:01,120
Speaker 1: did and does inform plastic surgeons of out how skin

912
00:53:01,239 --> 00:53:04,000
Speaker 1: grows and how you can mold it and and sculpt it.

913
00:53:04,120 --> 00:53:07,480
Speaker 1: So yeah, in this we see uh, the sixteenth century

914
00:53:07,560 --> 00:53:11,000
Speaker 1: advent of the Italian method. Now to to picture this, um,

915
00:53:11,640 --> 00:53:13,319
Speaker 1: if you don't have an image of it in front

916
00:53:13,360 --> 00:53:15,480
Speaker 1: of you, um. And and if you're not driving a

917
00:53:15,560 --> 00:53:18,160
Speaker 1: car doing anything where you need your hands place, place

918
00:53:18,239 --> 00:53:20,520
Speaker 1: your your palm of your hand, uh kind of on

919
00:53:20,600 --> 00:53:24,320
Speaker 1: your forehead, okay, and then allow your nose to to

920
00:53:24,440 --> 00:53:28,640
Speaker 1: touch your arm. That is basically the position where the

921
00:53:28,680 --> 00:53:31,319
Speaker 1: surgeon would would lock your arm into place. There would

922
00:53:31,320 --> 00:53:34,040
Speaker 1: be like a head vice type of scenario going on,

923
00:53:34,160 --> 00:53:36,400
Speaker 1: so that you could not move your arm away. You

924
00:53:36,440 --> 00:53:39,239
Speaker 1: cannot move your the flesh of your arm away from

925
00:53:39,280 --> 00:53:41,440
Speaker 1: the flesh of your face. And then that's where you

926
00:53:41,560 --> 00:53:45,640
Speaker 1: perform the the the skin graft. You walk a pedicle

927
00:53:45,719 --> 00:53:48,360
Speaker 1: of flesh, you sort of cut it away from the forearm,

928
00:53:48,640 --> 00:53:51,640
Speaker 1: and you stitch it into place where the nose should be,

929
00:53:51,840 --> 00:53:54,440
Speaker 1: in place of the nose that you've lost to syphilis

930
00:53:54,560 --> 00:53:56,839
Speaker 1: or duels or what have you, and then that's held

931
00:53:56,920 --> 00:54:00,520
Speaker 1: in place while the the the grafted skin grows onto

932
00:54:00,560 --> 00:54:03,840
Speaker 1: the face. So for a brief period of time, you

933
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:07,400
Speaker 1: have effectively sown your arm, or a surgeon has effectively

934
00:54:07,440 --> 00:54:10,160
Speaker 1: sown your arm to your face. And then once the

935
00:54:10,239 --> 00:54:13,480
Speaker 1: graft has taken then you cut the arm away from

936
00:54:13,560 --> 00:54:17,000
Speaker 1: it and you've you've essentially walked as a piece of

937
00:54:17,160 --> 00:54:19,799
Speaker 1: flesh off of your arm onto your face and then

938
00:54:19,960 --> 00:54:23,120
Speaker 1: use that to form a new nose, which is kind

939
00:54:23,160 --> 00:54:26,960
Speaker 1: of brilliant. Honestly. You ask a plastic surgeon about this

940
00:54:27,040 --> 00:54:28,960
Speaker 1: and they'll be like, this is a great way to

941
00:54:29,160 --> 00:54:32,520
Speaker 1: try to get the skin to graft onto other skin

942
00:54:32,960 --> 00:54:35,839
Speaker 1: and then be able to shape it um. The only

943
00:54:35,960 --> 00:54:38,640
Speaker 1: problem here is that for about two weeks you're walking

944
00:54:38,760 --> 00:54:42,320
Speaker 1: around with your your hand stuff to your head and

945
00:54:42,400 --> 00:54:45,319
Speaker 1: you can't really move your nose right because that's now

946
00:54:45,440 --> 00:54:48,480
Speaker 1: stuck to you your arm. Yeah, I'm guessing you're probably

947
00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:50,440
Speaker 1: not doing a whole lot of walking around town like that,

948
00:54:50,719 --> 00:54:53,719
Speaker 1: but but yeah, there's gonna be a weird period there.

949
00:54:53,880 --> 00:54:56,600
Speaker 1: But you know, the Italian method, it's a remarkable what

950
00:54:56,719 --> 00:54:59,840
Speaker 1: it can do. Like it may be summoning images of

951
00:55:00,040 --> 00:55:04,360
Speaker 1: like a really bad plastic surgery job or something, but

952
00:55:04,600 --> 00:55:08,160
Speaker 1: I've I've seen some images, particularly like particularly late eighteen

953
00:55:08,200 --> 00:55:11,880
Speaker 1: hundred's early nineteen hundreds, in which you see multiple pedicles

954
00:55:11,920 --> 00:55:15,160
Speaker 1: of flesh that are essentially walked up the body to

955
00:55:15,360 --> 00:55:18,120
Speaker 1: the face to repair individuals who say lost their lower

956
00:55:18,280 --> 00:55:22,399
Speaker 1: jaw uh to to two gunshot wound. Uh And then

957
00:55:22,440 --> 00:55:24,200
Speaker 1: you're able to walk all these pedicles up to the

958
00:55:24,280 --> 00:55:26,320
Speaker 1: face and it looks kind of ghastly at first, but

959
00:55:26,360 --> 00:55:28,759
Speaker 1: then you start putting them in their place, and at

960
00:55:28,800 --> 00:55:32,440
Speaker 1: the end of the of this series of procedures, you

961
00:55:33,000 --> 00:55:38,120
Speaker 1: have a much more uh normal looking visage uh there

962
00:55:38,200 --> 00:55:40,840
Speaker 1: in place of the damage tissue. So in in in

963
00:55:40,960 --> 00:55:45,000
Speaker 1: this scenario, we see the impact of syphilis on early

964
00:55:45,280 --> 00:55:50,000
Speaker 1: rhino pass plastic in Europe, but we also see other

965
00:55:50,080 --> 00:55:52,800
Speaker 1: ways in which syphilis ends up changing the way that

966
00:55:52,960 --> 00:55:57,040
Speaker 1: that that medicine is practiced uh through throughout the the

967
00:55:57,120 --> 00:56:01,120
Speaker 1: old world. For instance, immediately it allunge humorism and the

968
00:56:01,239 --> 00:56:04,840
Speaker 1: doctrine of contagion. That was probably another day. Um. We

969
00:56:04,960 --> 00:56:09,200
Speaker 1: also see syphilis as a catalyst for modern doctor patient confidentiality,

970
00:56:09,680 --> 00:56:12,359
Speaker 1: because suddenly it becomes a kind of a calling card

971
00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:14,719
Speaker 1: for some doctors. Hey, let me treat you for your

972
00:56:14,760 --> 00:56:16,880
Speaker 1: syphilist because I'll keep it on the download. Now, we

973
00:56:16,960 --> 00:56:18,800
Speaker 1: just kind of take that for granted that we go

974
00:56:18,880 --> 00:56:21,200
Speaker 1: into a doctor, they're not going to blab about syphilis

975
00:56:21,239 --> 00:56:28,960
Speaker 1: to everyone in the neighborhood. This is another key fact

976
00:56:29,000 --> 00:56:31,840
Speaker 1: that was brought up in the book Cleaned by Virginia

977
00:56:31,920 --> 00:56:35,239
Speaker 1: Smith that have referenced before in podcast, and that is

978
00:56:35,360 --> 00:56:39,240
Speaker 1: that previously you had you'd go into your your local

979
00:56:39,520 --> 00:56:42,960
Speaker 1: barber shop and you'd have the barber tonsors in the

980
00:56:43,000 --> 00:56:45,160
Speaker 1: front of barber surgeons in the back. You can have

981
00:56:45,280 --> 00:56:47,520
Speaker 1: your haircut, your face shaved, all of that that take

982
00:56:47,560 --> 00:56:49,000
Speaker 1: place in the front of the building and go into

983
00:56:49,040 --> 00:56:51,439
Speaker 1: the back, into the yard or what have you. That's

984
00:56:51,480 --> 00:56:54,160
Speaker 1: where you would receive minor surgeries. That's where you would

985
00:56:54,480 --> 00:56:58,239
Speaker 1: uh take a bath, uh and stand later as the

986
00:56:58,360 --> 00:57:00,479
Speaker 1: as syphilis begins to spread, that's where you start getting

987
00:57:00,520 --> 00:57:02,799
Speaker 1: treated for civilis that's where you might take your mercury bath.

988
00:57:03,280 --> 00:57:07,520
Speaker 1: And so the prevalence of the disease and fear regarding

989
00:57:07,560 --> 00:57:10,320
Speaker 1: the disease, this really leads to regulation. This really this

990
00:57:10,480 --> 00:57:12,680
Speaker 1: leads to of course, you know, paranoia. And so you

991
00:57:12,760 --> 00:57:15,160
Speaker 1: see the two separates. So you see the separation of

992
00:57:15,239 --> 00:57:19,000
Speaker 1: the barber tonsor and the barber surgeon. It's right because

993
00:57:19,080 --> 00:57:24,160
Speaker 1: that red and white striped barber pole used to indicate

994
00:57:24,240 --> 00:57:26,800
Speaker 1: that there are surgeries done there. Right in case anybody's

995
00:57:27,280 --> 00:57:30,480
Speaker 1: ever wondered why, um, that pole is outside of a

996
00:57:30,600 --> 00:57:34,840
Speaker 1: hair cuttery, all right, So that's this impact on on

997
00:57:35,760 --> 00:57:39,920
Speaker 1: on medicine, in medical surgeries, um, as well as cottage

998
00:57:39,960 --> 00:57:43,440
Speaker 1: industries like wig makers, right, and people who are are

999
00:57:43,560 --> 00:57:46,480
Speaker 1: selling you know, snake oils. But there are certain things

1000
00:57:46,520 --> 00:57:49,400
Speaker 1: that you cannot cover up here when it comes to syphilis.

1001
00:57:49,600 --> 00:57:52,520
Speaker 1: And one of the things would be your teeth. Now,

1002
00:57:52,560 --> 00:57:54,360
Speaker 1: you could pull all your teeth, you could put denters in,

1003
00:57:54,480 --> 00:57:55,880
Speaker 1: but if you didn't want to do that, you're kind

1004
00:57:55,880 --> 00:58:00,720
Speaker 1: of saddled with the ravages of your teeth bicyphilis. Yeah,

1005
00:58:00,840 --> 00:58:03,840
Speaker 1: and one of the more one of the more particular

1006
00:58:03,920 --> 00:58:05,680
Speaker 1: things we see here with the teeth is something that

1007
00:58:05,720 --> 00:58:09,120
Speaker 1: pops up in cases of congenital syphilis, and that's something

1008
00:58:09,200 --> 00:58:13,880
Speaker 1: known as Hutchinson teeth. These are, you know, as with

1009
00:58:13,960 --> 00:58:17,440
Speaker 1: all things syphilis, the exact symptoms vary, but this is

1010
00:58:17,480 --> 00:58:21,000
Speaker 1: often typified by sharpened looking teeth or peg shaped teeth

1011
00:58:21,040 --> 00:58:24,320
Speaker 1: that kind of have sharpened points on the edges. Um.

1012
00:58:25,640 --> 00:58:27,960
Speaker 1: You can look for for image of this online. I

1013
00:58:28,000 --> 00:58:29,840
Speaker 1: think I had, and actually I did a blog post

1014
00:58:30,400 --> 00:58:32,600
Speaker 1: um that I'll link to on the landing page for

1015
00:58:32,640 --> 00:58:36,040
Speaker 1: this podcast episode that includes, uh, the image that Julian

1016
00:58:36,040 --> 00:58:37,960
Speaker 1: and I are both looking at now. But they do

1017
00:58:38,160 --> 00:58:40,920
Speaker 1: have a kind of monstrous appearance. These are like sharpened

1018
00:58:40,960 --> 00:58:44,680
Speaker 1: teeth inside of a human mouth, particularly canine teeth. Yes,

1019
00:58:44,840 --> 00:58:46,840
Speaker 1: And so we start to look at this for a

1020
00:58:46,920 --> 00:58:50,959
Speaker 1: little bit, and uh, naturally you your mind would turn

1021
00:58:51,080 --> 00:58:53,880
Speaker 1: to vampire teeth because that's kind of what this looks like.

1022
00:58:53,960 --> 00:58:58,280
Speaker 1: It looks like a sort of non sperato version of

1023
00:58:58,400 --> 00:59:01,720
Speaker 1: vampire teeth. Yeah, And it's led us some commentators to

1024
00:59:01,840 --> 00:59:05,480
Speaker 1: argue that the the evolution of the vampire myth in

1025
00:59:05,960 --> 00:59:10,440
Speaker 1: in Western civilization may have connections to cases of congenital

1026
00:59:10,680 --> 00:59:14,040
Speaker 1: or hereditary syphilis. The children are born like this, they

1027
00:59:14,080 --> 00:59:16,800
Speaker 1: have this kind they could have in addition to these teeth,

1028
00:59:16,800 --> 00:59:21,280
Speaker 1: they may also have elongated fingers, they may have elongated skull.

1029
00:59:21,360 --> 00:59:25,960
Speaker 1: There various other deformities that might be interpreted as monstrous

1030
00:59:26,080 --> 00:59:30,480
Speaker 1: by by somebody taking in the scenario um and another

1031
00:59:31,000 --> 00:59:37,400
Speaker 1: connection between vampires and syphilis arguably takes us to brom

1032
00:59:37,480 --> 00:59:41,360
Speaker 1: Stoker himself, the author of the book A Dracula. And

1033
00:59:41,440 --> 00:59:44,520
Speaker 1: another area where vampires and syphilis seem to converge uh

1034
00:59:44,840 --> 00:59:48,760
Speaker 1: is in the case of the eight novel Dracula by

1035
00:59:48,840 --> 00:59:54,360
Speaker 1: Bram Stoker. Now brom Stoker's exact cause of death and

1036
00:59:54,440 --> 00:59:57,640
Speaker 1: he died in nineteen twelve, it remains, you know, somewhat

1037
00:59:57,720 --> 01:00:00,480
Speaker 1: something of a mystery. But some biographers a tribute as

1038
01:00:00,560 --> 01:00:05,040
Speaker 1: death to tertiary syphilis and make the further argument that

1039
01:00:05,960 --> 01:00:10,600
Speaker 1: Dracula itself, as a literary work is is kind of

1040
01:00:10,680 --> 01:00:16,280
Speaker 1: reflecting not only the paranoia regarding syphilis that's present in

1041
01:00:16,360 --> 01:00:21,360
Speaker 1: the culture, but also Stoker's own uh experience with the

1042
01:00:21,440 --> 01:00:24,320
Speaker 1: illness itself. Because you look at vampires, you look at

1043
01:00:24,360 --> 01:00:27,000
Speaker 1: tracula and you see uh, something that is at once

1044
01:00:27,040 --> 01:00:30,800
Speaker 1: sexual and monstrous. You see this this uh, this outsider

1045
01:00:30,880 --> 01:00:34,120
Speaker 1: that has come to in this case to England and

1046
01:00:34,480 --> 01:00:38,760
Speaker 1: is spreading this uh, this illness of vamporism. This uh,

1047
01:00:38,880 --> 01:00:42,960
Speaker 1: this this alien pathogen to to to to two women

1048
01:00:43,400 --> 01:00:46,760
Speaker 1: in the in the in the area. Yes, they are

1049
01:00:47,040 --> 01:00:49,920
Speaker 1: puncturing the women. Right. So again you have to use

1050
01:00:50,040 --> 01:00:54,280
Speaker 1: that metaphor which always comes up sex and vampires, right. Um,

1051
01:00:54,760 --> 01:00:57,120
Speaker 1: In fact, there is You send me this link to

1052
01:00:57,720 --> 01:01:01,600
Speaker 1: a class that's offered the says the Vampire in Literature

1053
01:01:01,640 --> 01:01:05,320
Speaker 1: and Cinema, taught by Tommys slav Lojnovich, who is a

1054
01:01:05,960 --> 01:01:09,920
Speaker 1: professor of Slavic and comparative literature, and he uses that

1055
01:01:10,000 --> 01:01:15,960
Speaker 1: vampire lore to explore folklore explanations of disease epidemics, Which

1056
01:01:16,040 --> 01:01:19,240
Speaker 1: makes sense, right, especially if you're you're caught up in this.

1057
01:01:19,920 --> 01:01:22,480
Speaker 1: You'll say, it's the sixteenth century, is the seventeenth century,

1058
01:01:22,880 --> 01:01:27,600
Speaker 1: and this is this pervasive disease and you have all

1059
01:01:27,640 --> 01:01:30,800
Speaker 1: of these sort of myths surrounding it. It's possible that

1060
01:01:31,120 --> 01:01:34,480
Speaker 1: that people could sort of extrapolate like maybe there are vampires,

1061
01:01:34,600 --> 01:01:36,760
Speaker 1: maybe this is how it's being spread. Yeah, because again

1062
01:01:36,880 --> 01:01:38,640
Speaker 1: four and a half centuries in which we could not

1063
01:01:38,800 --> 01:01:41,240
Speaker 1: cure it. So you're throwing what you can at. You're throwing,

1064
01:01:41,920 --> 01:01:46,280
Speaker 1: you're throwing actual research, you're throwing snake oil, you're throwing mercury,

1065
01:01:46,360 --> 01:01:48,840
Speaker 1: steam baths, you're throwing religion. And again, you know, because

1066
01:01:48,880 --> 01:01:51,920
Speaker 1: again it just can't be It can't be overstated, the

1067
01:01:52,280 --> 01:01:57,040
Speaker 1: the connection between between morality and en syphilis here and

1068
01:01:57,240 --> 01:01:58,880
Speaker 1: at least in the way that that people tried to

1069
01:01:58,960 --> 01:02:01,600
Speaker 1: understand it, or at least ended up viewing it in society.

1070
01:02:01,960 --> 01:02:03,760
Speaker 1: And so yeah, you're throw in a little myth in there,

1071
01:02:03,760 --> 01:02:06,920
Speaker 1: you throw a little magical thinking and and and there

1072
01:02:06,960 --> 01:02:09,440
Speaker 1: you go. You can easily see the vampire emerged. Nothing

1073
01:02:09,800 --> 01:02:13,200
Speaker 1: concrete there, but some food for thought. Yeah, which maybe

1074
01:02:13,480 --> 01:02:17,360
Speaker 1: why a vampire in the form of Count spiro Keet

1075
01:02:17,720 --> 01:02:22,000
Speaker 1: shows up in a Navy video in the seventies talking

1076
01:02:22,040 --> 01:02:25,120
Speaker 1: about STDs. Right, Yes, and you can watch this. I

1077
01:02:25,200 --> 01:02:28,360
Speaker 1: linked to the video on a blog post I did

1078
01:02:28,400 --> 01:02:31,560
Speaker 1: for Stuff to Blow your Mind. It's actually a fabulous documentary.

1079
01:02:31,600 --> 01:02:36,160
Speaker 1: It's kind of the style of of Schoolhouse Rocks and uh,

1080
01:02:36,240 --> 01:02:39,000
Speaker 1: and it has a Scooby Doo element to it as well. Yeah,

1081
01:02:39,040 --> 01:02:41,600
Speaker 1: it's it's very silly. Look. Even when they get into

1082
01:02:41,640 --> 01:02:44,600
Speaker 1: some of the rougher stuff, such as congenital syphilis or

1083
01:02:44,840 --> 01:02:49,800
Speaker 1: or actually showing illustrations of genitals, it's like the setup

1084
01:02:49,880 --> 01:02:53,200
Speaker 1: is very cartoon. It's Death himself is having an awards

1085
01:02:53,200 --> 01:02:56,840
Speaker 1: ceremony handing out the coveted fourth Horseman Award for a

1086
01:02:56,920 --> 01:03:00,320
Speaker 1: disease that's that's done the best work in causing misery

1087
01:03:00,400 --> 01:03:02,440
Speaker 1: and death around the world. And who should win it

1088
01:03:02,760 --> 01:03:07,480
Speaker 1: but count spirow Keet, who represents syphilis. Uh, the the

1089
01:03:07,880 --> 01:03:10,160
Speaker 1: embodiment of gnaia takes some issue with it. Some of

1090
01:03:10,160 --> 01:03:12,560
Speaker 1: the other illnesses are like, what's so great about sparrow keyt,

1091
01:03:12,640 --> 01:03:14,919
Speaker 1: what's he doing? There's a cure for it, blah blah blah,

1092
01:03:15,160 --> 01:03:18,120
Speaker 1: and so Death and spirow Keet, mainly Death goes on

1093
01:03:18,280 --> 01:03:22,560
Speaker 1: to explain to us why how selphialist works and why

1094
01:03:22,640 --> 01:03:25,600
Speaker 1: it is a problem, and why enlisted navy men, why

1095
01:03:25,680 --> 01:03:29,240
Speaker 1: why sailors should be on guard and should go seek

1096
01:03:29,280 --> 01:03:30,960
Speaker 1: treatment for any time they have any kind of a

1097
01:03:31,040 --> 01:03:33,720
Speaker 1: flare out, which kind of gets into this whole rich

1098
01:03:33,920 --> 01:03:37,560
Speaker 1: tradition of the military trying to bring a level of

1099
01:03:37,640 --> 01:03:43,400
Speaker 1: awareness of STDs to UH to everyone. In fact, if

1100
01:03:43,480 --> 01:03:46,800
Speaker 1: you go back to War one in wor World two, UH,

1101
01:03:47,000 --> 01:03:51,320
Speaker 1: you will see all sorts of pamphlets and posters warning

1102
01:03:52,000 --> 01:03:56,040
Speaker 1: military members to be very careful to watch out for SIFF,

1103
01:03:56,160 --> 01:04:00,520
Speaker 1: watch out for ganaia. And it even remind me of

1104
01:04:00,640 --> 01:04:03,520
Speaker 1: our quarantine episode in which we talked about the U. S.

1105
01:04:03,600 --> 01:04:08,640
Speaker 1: Military quarantining prostitutes in an attempt to try to separate

1106
01:04:09,160 --> 01:04:13,240
Speaker 1: what they thought is disease carrying prostitutes with STDs from

1107
01:04:13,520 --> 01:04:18,040
Speaker 1: military members. Yeah, so you have you have these campaigns

1108
01:04:18,080 --> 01:04:20,920
Speaker 1: that are basically in essence saying, hey, sailors, when you

1109
01:04:20,960 --> 01:04:24,040
Speaker 1: go into the next port town, please stay away from

1110
01:04:24,040 --> 01:04:26,520
Speaker 1: the prostitutes because you could catch syphilis and it's bad news.

1111
01:04:26,800 --> 01:04:29,160
Speaker 1: And you have to bear in mind too that even

1112
01:04:29,280 --> 01:04:33,800
Speaker 1: after the advent of penicillin, you'll have situations, particularly in wartime,

1113
01:04:34,080 --> 01:04:36,680
Speaker 1: where there's there's not an unlimited amount of penicillan to

1114
01:04:36,800 --> 01:04:41,400
Speaker 1: throw at at your your navy men's venereal diseases. You have,

1115
01:04:41,680 --> 01:04:43,640
Speaker 1: you have that a lot of that penicilla is earmarked

1116
01:04:43,680 --> 01:04:47,800
Speaker 1: for the battlefield for for use in helping with soldiers

1117
01:04:47,840 --> 01:04:50,640
Speaker 1: have been injured in combat. You don't want to spend

1118
01:04:50,680 --> 01:04:53,640
Speaker 1: it all just on a bunch of horny sailors who

1119
01:04:53,640 --> 01:04:55,880
Speaker 1: can't control themselves when they go into a farm port

1120
01:04:55,920 --> 01:04:58,520
Speaker 1: of call. So they're throwing education at the problem as well.

1121
01:04:59,000 --> 01:05:03,120
Speaker 1: But there's speaking to a male audience, and and so

1122
01:05:03,360 --> 01:05:08,200
Speaker 1: the messaging tends to take on a very sexist feel. Yeah.

1123
01:05:08,440 --> 01:05:11,920
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the posters which I'm looking at

1124
01:05:12,080 --> 01:05:15,240
Speaker 1: right now is a really good example. It's this, Um

1125
01:05:16,200 --> 01:05:18,960
Speaker 1: it's a photograph of a girl that looks, you know,

1126
01:05:19,440 --> 01:05:23,640
Speaker 1: kind of innocent and pure and you know, very Norman Rockwell,

1127
01:05:23,800 --> 01:05:26,120
Speaker 1: like this is the Norman Rockwell cow. I'm looking at

1128
01:05:26,320 --> 01:05:28,520
Speaker 1: very Norman Rockwell. In fact, she has this sort of

1129
01:05:28,640 --> 01:05:32,160
Speaker 1: beatific smile on as if you know she's doing godly work.

1130
01:05:32,600 --> 01:05:35,240
Speaker 1: And then there are you know, some servicemen who are

1131
01:05:35,360 --> 01:05:39,400
Speaker 1: looking at her at a distance. And across this poster

1132
01:05:39,560 --> 01:05:43,960
Speaker 1: it says she may look clean, but and the butt

1133
01:05:44,080 --> 01:05:46,320
Speaker 1: isn't an all red and all caps, and it says

1134
01:05:46,360 --> 01:05:51,040
Speaker 1: pick ups good time girls. Prostitutes spread syphilis and gonorrhea.

1135
01:05:51,360 --> 01:05:54,200
Speaker 1: You can't beat the axis is if you get v D.

1136
01:05:55,400 --> 01:05:57,880
Speaker 1: And at what I think is so interesting about this

1137
01:05:58,080 --> 01:06:01,439
Speaker 1: is that there are many other posters that have more

1138
01:06:03,520 --> 01:06:07,680
Speaker 1: I don't know what you say, tawdry looking women that

1139
01:06:08,000 --> 01:06:12,000
Speaker 1: there are basically saying their prostitutes. But then you have

1140
01:06:12,120 --> 01:06:14,280
Speaker 1: this other sort of like I said, be to fix smiled,

1141
01:06:14,760 --> 01:06:18,240
Speaker 1: innocent looking girl. And the point is, as you say,

1142
01:06:18,440 --> 01:06:22,880
Speaker 1: is that they're speaking to men, and um, they're really

1143
01:06:22,960 --> 01:06:27,080
Speaker 1: underscoring this idea that STDs veneral, that Jesus all begin

1144
01:06:27,240 --> 01:06:31,680
Speaker 1: with women, and that they are the font of evil. Yeah.

1145
01:06:31,720 --> 01:06:34,600
Speaker 1: I mean there's this darkness in the woman. It's almost

1146
01:06:34,640 --> 01:06:38,080
Speaker 1: like the like the feminine form as monster is the

1147
01:06:38,200 --> 01:06:40,680
Speaker 1: message here and and you see again you do see

1148
01:06:40,720 --> 01:06:44,600
Speaker 1: some more fantastic, horrific visions of this. There's one where

1149
01:06:45,120 --> 01:06:47,840
Speaker 1: the woman is like moving a handheld mask away from

1150
01:06:47,880 --> 01:06:50,480
Speaker 1: her face and behind it there's a death skull. Um.

1151
01:06:50,680 --> 01:06:54,400
Speaker 1: The Salvador Dollis illustration that he did for an anti

1152
01:06:54,480 --> 01:06:59,880
Speaker 1: syphilis poster in which you see the two buxom women. Yeah,

1153
01:07:00,000 --> 01:07:01,840
Speaker 1: I guess it kind of melting kind of, but they

1154
01:07:02,240 --> 01:07:03,760
Speaker 1: look like a death skull. You know. It's one of

1155
01:07:03,840 --> 01:07:06,680
Speaker 1: those one of his classic style images where you see

1156
01:07:07,040 --> 01:07:10,000
Speaker 1: the death's head uh in the form of the women.

1157
01:07:10,440 --> 01:07:11,960
Speaker 1: I'll be sure to throw that on stuff to your

1158
01:07:11,960 --> 01:07:13,760
Speaker 1: mind dot com as well. So everyone can see it.

1159
01:07:13,840 --> 01:07:15,920
Speaker 1: And yeah, weren't you telling me about the sixteenth century

1160
01:07:16,000 --> 01:07:21,560
Speaker 1: hypothesis of the woman as really the germanator of syphilis. Yeah, yeah,

1161
01:07:21,600 --> 01:07:25,000
Speaker 1: there was this notion that to syphilis emerged because you

1162
01:07:25,080 --> 01:07:28,320
Speaker 1: had you had women, you had prostitutes who were having

1163
01:07:28,360 --> 01:07:32,480
Speaker 1: sex with multiple men. Uh, and then those semens would

1164
01:07:32,520 --> 01:07:35,040
Speaker 1: those different seeds would be inside her and they would

1165
01:07:35,120 --> 01:07:39,160
Speaker 1: mingle together and corrupt into the form of syphilis. So

1166
01:07:39,440 --> 01:07:41,320
Speaker 1: with and you know, they had no one there was

1167
01:07:41,400 --> 01:07:44,800
Speaker 1: no proof to back up this ridiculous theory, but it

1168
01:07:44,880 --> 01:07:48,080
Speaker 1: did place the blame firmly on on women and very

1169
01:07:48,160 --> 01:07:52,120
Speaker 1: moralistically as well. These women are are sinning and therefore

1170
01:07:52,320 --> 01:07:56,560
Speaker 1: you have sickness arising from them. They are the source

1171
01:07:57,080 --> 01:08:00,640
Speaker 1: of of the ailment itself. Yeah, and uh, not not

1172
01:08:00,800 --> 01:08:02,680
Speaker 1: to get too crazy here, but it just kind of

1173
01:08:02,760 --> 01:08:05,160
Speaker 1: brings me back to this idea of witches. And we

1174
01:08:05,280 --> 01:08:07,520
Speaker 1: talked about which is and we talked about, you know,

1175
01:08:07,760 --> 01:08:12,320
Speaker 1: the power of women and sexuality. And again here we

1176
01:08:12,400 --> 01:08:16,479
Speaker 1: are subscribing this sort of power, this death to women

1177
01:08:16,920 --> 01:08:20,160
Speaker 1: in the form of syphilis. And uh, you know, I

1178
01:08:20,200 --> 01:08:23,080
Speaker 1: don't know that that's what all the poster artists intended,

1179
01:08:23,120 --> 01:08:26,479
Speaker 1: but it certainly captured the spirit of the times. Yeah,

1180
01:08:26,600 --> 01:08:29,240
Speaker 1: and and again they were talking to a predominantly male audience.

1181
01:08:29,520 --> 01:08:31,720
Speaker 1: As we mentioned before, even in UH, you know, over

1182
01:08:31,760 --> 01:08:36,160
Speaker 1: the centuries that syphilis was really ravaging Europe, you saw

1183
01:08:36,240 --> 01:08:39,439
Speaker 1: the highest percentages of infection uh in the in the

1184
01:08:39,520 --> 01:08:41,800
Speaker 1: in the soldiers are certainly a higher percentage than in

1185
01:08:42,000 --> 01:08:45,800
Speaker 1: the rest of the population. So soldiers and prostitutes were

1186
01:08:46,000 --> 01:08:49,960
Speaker 1: a key area of transference. Indeed. All right, so there

1187
01:08:50,040 --> 01:08:52,880
Speaker 1: you have it again. There's just there's not enough time

1188
01:08:52,960 --> 01:08:55,320
Speaker 1: and even in a series of podcasts to really get

1189
01:08:55,360 --> 01:09:00,439
Speaker 1: into all the ways that's syphilis informed UH Western culture

1190
01:09:00,760 --> 01:09:04,800
Speaker 1: during its UH four and a half centuries of unchecked life.

1191
01:09:05,520 --> 01:09:07,479
Speaker 1: But but hopefully we hit some of the high points.

1192
01:09:07,520 --> 01:09:09,920
Speaker 1: We hit some of the ideas who were play here

1193
01:09:10,040 --> 01:09:13,960
Speaker 1: about about us versus the other, about men and women,

1194
01:09:14,120 --> 01:09:18,200
Speaker 1: about the morality, about the cosmetics of dealing with syphilis,

1195
01:09:18,520 --> 01:09:20,479
Speaker 1: and if nothing else, that should serve as an interesting

1196
01:09:20,560 --> 01:09:24,000
Speaker 1: starting point for your own exploration of the topic. And

1197
01:09:24,080 --> 01:09:26,840
Speaker 1: also touching um the origin of it as well, and

1198
01:09:27,320 --> 01:09:30,559
Speaker 1: knowing that we don't have the end all be all

1199
01:09:30,800 --> 01:09:33,200
Speaker 1: theory in place yet, but we do have an idea

1200
01:09:33,360 --> 01:09:36,639
Speaker 1: of where it came from all right, Um, you guys

1201
01:09:36,680 --> 01:09:39,840
Speaker 1: can find us a multitude of places. Yeah, that's right.

1202
01:09:39,880 --> 01:09:41,560
Speaker 1: Go to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That

1203
01:09:41,680 --> 01:09:43,599
Speaker 1: is the mothership. You will find all the blog posts,

1204
01:09:43,600 --> 01:09:46,400
Speaker 1: the podcast, the videos, etcetera, including a number of different

1205
01:09:46,400 --> 01:09:49,280
Speaker 1: items related to this Symphilist series that we've put out

1206
01:09:53,280 --> 01:09:55,760
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it,

1207
01:09:55,880 --> 01:10:01,280
Speaker 1: How stuff works dot Com three year