Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the Vault, and boy do we
Speaker 1: have a treat for you. This is a grand old episode, Robert,
Speaker 1: I know you're very excited about this one. When did
Speaker 1: this originally air in? Yes, this is this is a
Speaker 1: much older episode than a lot of the other Vault episodes.
Speaker 1: We've discussed. It published August and it's a pair of
Speaker 1: episodes that Julie Douglas and I put together that discussed
Speaker 1: the history of syphilis, how the science of syphilis, how
Speaker 1: syphilis works. Yes, the the sexually transmitted disease syphilis, and
Speaker 1: it is just a fascinating topic. It's it's easily one
Speaker 1: of my my favorite episodes of all time. Uh So,
Speaker 1: we we've taken those two episodes and stitched them together
Speaker 1: into one episode. So it might be a little clunky
Speaker 1: at times, but all the information is is definitely still valid.
Speaker 1: Will there be vampires, There will be vampires. Be prepared
Speaker 1: for the syphilitic vampire. All right, Well, let's go right in.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. From How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: Dot com hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and um Julie Douglas, and
Speaker 1: I'd like you to take a moment to just try
Speaker 1: and create, try and imagine the most destructive disease possible.
Speaker 1: Imagine the disease that ravages the body. That ravage is
Speaker 1: just about every tissue, every every part of the human
Speaker 1: form that it takes down, the sex organs, that takes
Speaker 1: apart the face, takes apart your identity, and in some
Speaker 1: cases ultimately robs you of your mind as well before
Speaker 1: killing you outright. Yeah, you mentioned sex organs. So also
Speaker 1: imagine that there's a moral to mention to this disease
Speaker 1: that would give you the sort of outward appearance that
Speaker 1: perhaps you had been engaging in conduct unbecoming to you. Yes,
Speaker 1: And of course, in all of this, we're talking about
Speaker 1: a very real illness, and that is syphilis. We're actually
Speaker 1: going to devote two whole episodes to syphilis here. This
Speaker 1: first episode, Syphilis the Great Imitator, is mainly going to
Speaker 1: focus on the organism that causes syphilis and how syphilis
Speaker 1: manifests itself in the human body. In the second episode,
Speaker 1: we are going to get into the cultural and historical
Speaker 1: impact of syphilis, because that that in its own right
Speaker 1: is an enormous topic of interest because for four and
Speaker 1: a half centuries, syphilis ravages the Old World, ravages Western culture,
Speaker 1: and it's it's really kind of difficult to overstate the
Speaker 1: the role that syphilis played in coloring Western civilization during
Speaker 1: that time. Yes, don't run away, because this is alf
Speaker 1: really interesting that the bacteriaum itself is fascinating, and then
Speaker 1: of course the cultural implications. Now we have our first
Speaker 1: recorded epidemic of venereal syphilus occurring in Europe, and by
Speaker 1: the close of the fifteenth century you have chaos just
Speaker 1: reraining in Naples, Italy, where there's a huge outbreak. In fact, uh,
Speaker 1: Pope Innocent the eighth asked French King Charles the Eighth
Speaker 1: to invade the city with troops to try to keep
Speaker 1: it under control. But what do you think happens? Well,
Speaker 1: as we would, as we would eventually learned, sending troops
Speaker 1: and to deal with syphilis not the best strategy because
Speaker 1: because that they're going to end up catching the syphilis,
Speaker 1: and then when you draw the troops out, they're going
Speaker 1: to take the syphilis elsewhere exactly. And the problem here
Speaker 1: is that syphis as being known as the great imitator
Speaker 1: because it has all these different symptoms that at the
Speaker 1: outset might be mistaken for other illnesses. So imagine this
Speaker 1: time period in which this was happening and people not
Speaker 1: quite knowing what they were dealing with. Yeah, to quote
Speaker 1: Sir William Ostler, he says, no syphilis in all its
Speaker 1: manifestations and relations and all other things clinical will be
Speaker 1: added to you. There is no organ in the body,
Speaker 1: nor any tissue in the organs, which syphilis does not invade.
Speaker 1: And it is therefore manifestly difficult to speak, at least
Speaker 1: at all concisely of the pathology of the disease, just
Speaker 1: as as it is almost impossible to describe its clinical
Speaker 1: symptoms without mentioning almost every symptom of every known disease.
Speaker 1: And these symptoms are not going to be the same
Speaker 1: from one person to the next. So you have a
Speaker 1: disease that is that is seemingly very stealthy, very nefarious.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's it's changing its shape, it's changing its strategy,
Speaker 1: it's going dormant, it's popping back up and uh. And
Speaker 1: the whole time everyone's trying to understand what's going on,
Speaker 1: how to prevent it. Uh. Again, there's there's this this
Speaker 1: whole seemingly moral side to it because it's spread through
Speaker 1: sexual contact, and it ends up spreading across every social
Speaker 1: level in society. Uh. It's it's a disease that ravages
Speaker 1: the poor, it ravages the rich. It's hitting the royalty,
Speaker 1: it's hitting the clergy, it's hitting anyone who's engaging in
Speaker 1: sexual contact, which everyone. Right. In fact, it is so
Speaker 1: prevalent that you get a couple of references to it
Speaker 1: in Shakespeare's works like Pox of your Houses and Romeo
Speaker 1: and Juliet, which is now a curse like a pox
Speaker 1: on you. It's but the problem with this is that
Speaker 1: we tend to think of it as this antiquated illness, right,
Speaker 1: it is not. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control
Speaker 1: estimate that annually more than fifty five people in the
Speaker 1: US get new syphilis infections, and during two thousand and
Speaker 1: twelve there were more than forty nine thousand reported new
Speaker 1: cases of syphilis compared to forty eight thousand estimated new
Speaker 1: diagnosis of HIV. So it is still present and it
Speaker 1: is most common in people between the ages of twenty
Speaker 1: and twenty nine years of age, which has led it
Speaker 1: to be called cupids disease by the way. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: of course, one other way we should mention that you
Speaker 1: can transfer syphilis is through an unborn child, and so
Speaker 1: congenital syphilis, which we'll we'll talk about a little bit
Speaker 1: more later. That's also a huge problem because when the
Speaker 1: syphilis manifests in a newborn child, uh, the the the
Speaker 1: effects are kin it can be pretty disastrous. So once
Speaker 1: against syphilis, even though it is a tremendous interest from
Speaker 1: a historical standpoint, it is not a purely historical disease.
Speaker 1: Now we just don't put as much emphasis on it
Speaker 1: these days in terms of infectious diseases because it can
Speaker 1: be controlled by penicillin, and we'll talk about that later. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: it can be wiped out by penicillin and uh and
Speaker 1: and that has been a huge advantage in the war
Speaker 1: against syphilis for sure. But still it is it is
Speaker 1: an adversary that that carries on even in the advent
Speaker 1: of what would seem a magic bullet. Yeah, and let's
Speaker 1: talk about this dastardly organism also known as treponema palladum. Yes,
Speaker 1: such Treponema palladum, which is a treponemal disease. There are
Speaker 1: other treponemal diseases which will get into these and cool
Speaker 1: include a visual penta and yaws. None of these, of
Speaker 1: course are sexually transmitted, but they are essentially skin ailments
Speaker 1: that are that are transferred by skin to skin contact. Yes,
Speaker 1: so they are related to Treponema palladum, but they themselves,
Speaker 1: as you say, are not spread through sexual contact. And
Speaker 1: I should add to to be clear if you want
Speaker 1: to get really particular. Syphilis is caused by a subspecies
Speaker 1: of Treponema palladum, essentially Treponema paladum palatum. But for all
Speaker 1: intents and references going forward, Treponema palladum ke paalatum syphilis.
Speaker 1: You'll know what we're talking about. Yeah, Now, this is
Speaker 1: a spiral shaped bacterium also known as a sparrow keet
Speaker 1: and we're talking about slender, spirally undulating bacteria here and
Speaker 1: again it is most often spread by sexual contact, and
Speaker 1: the disease occurs in three primary stages. We'll talk more
Speaker 1: about that and uh, now, these these later stages that
Speaker 1: will discuss are not so common in our modern era, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the later stages obviously deal with a case of
Speaker 1: syphilis that has not been treated, not been cured with
Speaker 1: the penicillin. All right, let's let's talk about how syphalis
Speaker 1: is transmitted. And I'd like you to think about this,
Speaker 1: uh in terms of an invasion, because that's what it is.
Speaker 1: We're dealing with an invasion of these spiral keets into
Speaker 1: the human body. And this invasion takes place in a
Speaker 1: few different phases. So syphilis can be spread again by
Speaker 1: through the through the birthless, sent by kissing, close contact, um,
Speaker 1: transfusion of fresh human blood. But the main ways that
Speaker 1: it's that it's spreading us through sexual contact. We're talking
Speaker 1: vaginal sex, oral sex, anal sex um. All of these
Speaker 1: will serve as as a as an entry point. Now,
Speaker 1: the way that the spiro keets into the body they
Speaker 1: enter through the skin, and when intimate contact of this
Speaker 1: nature is made, that is when when the spiro keet
Speaker 1: enters the body, enters through the skin and there it
Speaker 1: will hang out until it makes itself known in the
Speaker 1: form of a syphilitics or also known as a shanker
Speaker 1: and shankers occur mainly on external genitals that jina anus
Speaker 1: or in the rectum. They can also occur on the
Speaker 1: lips and in the mouth. So this is when you
Speaker 1: see most of the transmission occur among people when these
Speaker 1: sores are present. Right, this is primary syphilis. This is
Speaker 1: first stage syphilis. And think of this in terms of
Speaker 1: the enemy initially getting into the fortress. This is the
Speaker 1: shanker is literally the entry point for the for the
Speaker 1: spiro keets. And it may be a small number of
Speaker 1: spire keets and maybe a larger number of spiro keets,
Speaker 1: but this is where they're getting in. This is the
Speaker 1: whole in the fortress wall. Yeah. And these shankers can
Speaker 1: appear usually around twenty one days after infection, but sometimes
Speaker 1: as little as ten or even ninety days. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they may hang around for three to six weeks. And
Speaker 1: here's the thing. They can if you look up pictures
Speaker 1: online and sure you should definitely go into a Google
Speaker 1: image search for for what these look like. Your loins,
Speaker 1: your your loins, But they may look pretty intense at times,
Speaker 1: but these are painless. Uh, And they're easily confused with
Speaker 1: any number of small skin ailments that may pop up
Speaker 1: in even a healthy person's life, you know, the stuff
Speaker 1: like ingrown hairs or or you know, or various other bumps.
Speaker 1: So that would be caused by by any number of
Speaker 1: other ailments. Again, it's a great imitator. Right now. If
Speaker 1: you do not get treated at this point, well then
Speaker 1: it gets into secondary syphilis. And during this stage that's
Speaker 1: when you see those skin rashes, swords in your mouth.
Speaker 1: And so that's the primary stage and the and it's
Speaker 1: key to note here that the shanker disappears advantishes. So
Speaker 1: if you were concerned about it, if you really I
Speaker 1: wonder what this painless, you know, ugly spot on my
Speaker 1: genitals is, well, then it goes away. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the dangers that we see over and over again
Speaker 1: with syphilis is that the the infection seems to go away,
Speaker 1: the illness may seem to go away, but as we're
Speaker 1: about to learn, it does not. And again, imagine yourself
Speaker 1: in you know, the fifteenth century. If you have this
Speaker 1: and then that disappears, you think, oh, everything is fine, right,
Speaker 1: So I got was upset over and over nothing, and
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you didn't even notice. It's it's entirely
Speaker 1: likely that one wouldn't even notice that the shanker had
Speaker 1: popped up. Now, most likely you wouldn't have been treated
Speaker 1: at that point in time because there wasn't anything necessarily
Speaker 1: to treat you with that was really effective. So it
Speaker 1: would then develop into a secondary stage called secondary syphilis,
Speaker 1: in which you would have skin rashes and or sores
Speaker 1: in your mouth, vagina, and anus also called mucus membrane lesions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you may also see other varying symptoms such as fever, lethargy, headaches,
Speaker 1: general body aches, hair loss. And this is the point
Speaker 1: of the invasion in which the enemy, the enemy made
Speaker 1: it in in the primary stage and in second dary syphilis,
Speaker 1: the enemy has spread throughout the castle, all right, and
Speaker 1: and is making itself known throughout the invaded city, that
Speaker 1: is the human body, right, and you are highly contagious
Speaker 1: at this point in fact, gentle mill source caused by
Speaker 1: syphilis make it a lot easier to transmit and acquire
Speaker 1: things like HIV infection, right, so you can get a
Speaker 1: secondary infection at this point in fact, there is an
Speaker 1: estimated two to fivefold increased risk of acquiring HIV if
Speaker 1: you're exposed to infection when syphilis is present in these
Speaker 1: first and second stages. Now at this point after secondary syphilis,
Speaker 1: and here again we see that the secondary syphilis, this
Speaker 1: outbreak period, this goes away as well, which again could
Speaker 1: lead someone to say, well, that was horrible, and maybe
Speaker 1: they may not even realize that it was connected to
Speaker 1: the primaries outbreak, and they might, but they can easily imagine, well,
Speaker 1: I'm done with this now, it's it's it's it's done.
Speaker 1: It's finished. Whatever illness was affecting me, the pox has
Speaker 1: left me, right. Yeah, But little do they know that
Speaker 1: this is just the latent stage of the US and
Speaker 1: it's just waiting around. It might not even reveal itself
Speaker 1: for decades. Yeah. So imagine the enemy has invaded the castle,
Speaker 1: They've made a lot of mischief, and then suddenly they
Speaker 1: seem to be gone. But they're not gone. There in
Speaker 1: the basement. They're in the basement, They're in there in
Speaker 1: every house in the city. There. They've literally become a
Speaker 1: part of the city. They're essentially a sleeper cell. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that is what latent syphilis is. Tertiary syphilis. The
Speaker 1: stage really is quite gruesome because it kind of takes
Speaker 1: everything in the body down to the studs, or more so,
Speaker 1: I should say, it's like you say, the sleeper cells
Speaker 1: in the basements, they become stronger and they come roaring
Speaker 1: back into the body and they cause a lot of havoc. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, we see this over and over again
Speaker 1: with with syphilis. But it has such metaphorical power. Is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that I think we're aside from
Speaker 1: its uh, its power to harm and di figuous, uh,
Speaker 1: the reason we're drawn to it so is you do
Speaker 1: see this idea of of the the infection. It flared up,
Speaker 1: then it flared up again, and then it comes back
Speaker 1: in only fifteen of the case is a much stronger
Speaker 1: form in the tertiary stage, far more debilitating, far more
Speaker 1: destructive and ultimately lethal stage of the illness. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: this late stage you could have symptoms that include difficulty
Speaker 1: coordinating your muscle movements, paralysis, not being able to move
Speaker 1: some of your body, uh, numbness, blindness, and dementia. And
Speaker 1: then in the late late stages, the disease begins to
Speaker 1: ravage your internal organs and that is what can result
Speaker 1: in death. And this is one of the remarkable things
Speaker 1: about this is that this stage can occur ten to
Speaker 1: twenty years after primary syphilis. So this is it's again
Speaker 1: the metaphorical phorical power of this. It's like the the
Speaker 1: sins of the young individual coming back to destroy the
Speaker 1: older individual. You know. It's um, it's it's gruesome stuff,
Speaker 1: and and and against that one may not even remember
Speaker 1: that for style, break all that clearly and suddenly all
Speaker 1: these changes are happening to their body and ultimately to
Speaker 1: their mind. Yeah. And we have largely up until this
Speaker 1: point treated this in a very clinical fashion and not
Speaker 1: really talked about the sights and the sounds and the
Speaker 1: spells of what this looks like, which we'll do more
Speaker 1: in the next podcast. But just know that at this point, um,
Speaker 1: this this, this is really adding injury to insult because
Speaker 1: you might have lost your nose, you know, and recovered
Speaker 1: from that, and and all of a sudden you think
Speaker 1: you're out in the clear, and boom it comes back
Speaker 1: in in such a corrosive manner that you find out
Speaker 1: that this is really the death knell. Yeah. Corrosive is
Speaker 1: an excellent term to use because you see the you
Speaker 1: see loss of teeth, you see the destruction of the
Speaker 1: palette in the mouth, you see you see the the
Speaker 1: the collapse of the nose into what is known as
Speaker 1: saddle nose, where basically the nose collapses and around the
Speaker 1: bridge and becomes kind of upturned and smaller looking, and
Speaker 1: then they eventually um appear to rot entirely. Uh. Saddle
Speaker 1: nose is also caused can also be caused by just
Speaker 1: damage to the nose. You'll see boxers that suffer from
Speaker 1: saddle nose. Also. UH. Extreme cocaine addiction can somehow sometimes
Speaker 1: have that effect on individuals. But yeah, you're seeing it
Speaker 1: attack your facial features, You're seeing it attack uh, your
Speaker 1: genitals in a very destructive manner, and then also getting
Speaker 1: into your organs. You only again to back to the
Speaker 1: quote that I read at the beginning of the podcast
Speaker 1: by h Dr William Osler. It it the spiral keets
Speaker 1: of syphilis attack every part of the body like nothing
Speaker 1: is off limits. To go back to that castle analogy
Speaker 1: from from earlier, the invader has lived in the city
Speaker 1: for ten to twenty years and now in potentially every
Speaker 1: household in the city has decided to just burn everything
Speaker 1: to the ground right now. The other part of this
Speaker 1: is that syphilis, as we have mentioned before, can be
Speaker 1: tru trans admitted through the placenta. So what does this mean.
Speaker 1: It means that during that time period from the fifteenth
Speaker 1: century to the twentieth century, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: children born with syphilis also called congenital syphilis, and even
Speaker 1: to this day, according to the World Health Organization, you
Speaker 1: have a million children born annually with congenital syphilis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's very serious stuff because nearly half of all
Speaker 1: children infected with syphilis, whether or in the womb, die
Speaker 1: shortly before or after birth, and sometimes this can also
Speaker 1: result in still borns um And despite the fact that
Speaker 1: syphilis can be cure with antbiotics if caught early, there
Speaker 1: are arising rates among pregnant women in the United States,
Speaker 1: and that of course has increased the number of infants
Speaker 1: born with this. Now, some of the complications include blindness, deafness,
Speaker 1: deformity of the face, and nervous system problems. Now, why
Speaker 1: does syphilis hang out in the body so long, you
Speaker 1: might be wondering, Well, Uh, it's it maybe due in
Speaker 1: part to keep a pallatum having a slow dividing time
Speaker 1: of thirty to thirty three hours, and it's likely that
Speaker 1: t pautum undergoes an even slower rate of division during
Speaker 1: the latent stages of the disease. So it's a it's
Speaker 1: it's a long living creature. From a bacterial standpoint, yes,
Speaker 1: it's like a bacterial croc pot Yeah. Alright, Um, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the current state of treatment and infections. Oh,
Speaker 1: but I say current, I have to mention that there
Speaker 1: are a couple of old timey ways in which they
Speaker 1: were thought to be cures for it, one of which
Speaker 1: is mercury. Yes, inhaling mercury vapor. In fact, there is
Speaker 1: This was so common for hundreds of years that a
Speaker 1: little phrase came out of that, A night with venus
Speaker 1: a lifetime with mercury. Yeah. So you would find yourself
Speaker 1: going regularly for essentially skin treatments, taking these these mercury
Speaker 1: steam bats and and enduring the harmful effects of that
Speaker 1: of that mercury anihilation on top of the ravages of syphilis.
Speaker 1: It did kill the sparrow key but yes, it also
Speaker 1: poisoned the patient. Yeah. Well, there are a few different
Speaker 1: factors involved there, because on one hand, uh, their you know,
Speaker 1: their arguments to what effect the mercury had in killing
Speaker 1: the sparrow keets. But then the sparrow keets are so
Speaker 1: entrenched in the body, what can you do. Also, again,
Speaker 1: think about that that primary and secondary stage, the flare
Speaker 1: ups and the disappearance. You have individuals that could go
Speaker 1: into it to be treated for for their symptoms of syphilis,
Speaker 1: and low and behold, the symptoms vanish with the treatment,
Speaker 1: not because of the treatment, just because of the timing
Speaker 1: of the treatment. And ultimately, again you're dealing with four
Speaker 1: and a half centuries in which there is no cure
Speaker 1: for this illness. So if someone's trying to sell you
Speaker 1: an illness, you're going to try and buy it. That's
Speaker 1: just how it goes. And you know, if this disease
Speaker 1: is ravaging my body, if you tell me that mercury
Speaker 1: might help, then I'm probably going to try mercury. Sure,
Speaker 1: you're going to try anything at that point, including malaria,
Speaker 1: which was apparently something that was discovered in n by
Speaker 1: Julius Wagner Jarig to help halt some of the symptoms
Speaker 1: of syphilis, particularly in neurosyphilis, that advanced stage in which
Speaker 1: you get psychosis and you get paralysis. And they found
Speaker 1: that if you induced a malarial fever in patients, well
Speaker 1: that could help with the actual infection. You also saw
Speaker 1: the use of so called ciphilization treatments. This was where
Speaker 1: you would essentially try to inoculate the patient in the
Speaker 1: same way that you would treat them for smallpox. Um,
Speaker 1: this didn't work. Uh, it's submitting yourself to the disease,
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, trying to to build up you know,
Speaker 1: bodily immunity doesn't work. Now, I've I've read some mixed
Speaker 1: reports of how experiments on rabbits uh in the modern
Speaker 1: age have potentially shown some possibility there. But you get
Speaker 1: into a situation where it would take so many applications
Speaker 1: of syphilis and and we're talking about a rabbit and
Speaker 1: it hasn't been studied enough and you would certainly could
Speaker 1: not study it in humans. So so yeah, and then
Speaker 1: also why study it when we have penicillin that can
Speaker 1: wipe it out? And sometimes it's diagnosed by testing fluid
Speaker 1: from a syphilis sore and looking for the sparrow keet
Speaker 1: via dark field microscopy. The name of that blood test,
Speaker 1: by the way, is the Wasserman blood test. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it was developed in nineteen o six just to get
Speaker 1: everything in the timeline squared away there so as we
Speaker 1: had mentioned syphilis can be treated with antibotics, so we're
Speaker 1: talking about penicillin. We're talking about g venzatine, doxycycline, or tetracycline,
Speaker 1: and that's for patients who are usually allergic to penicillin.
Speaker 1: In the length of treatment depends on the extent of
Speaker 1: the infection and factors such as the person's overall health.
Speaker 1: So let's say you didn't get to it right away
Speaker 1: and you kind of get to the second or or
Speaker 1: have a secondary phase of it, you would still have
Speaker 1: to deal with any sort of ill effects that you
Speaker 1: might have sustained at that point. All right, So at
Speaker 1: this point you might be wondering, what can I do
Speaker 1: two decrease my chances of catching syphilis. Well, according to
Speaker 1: the CDC, there basically two things you can do because
Speaker 1: there's no there's no vaccine for syphilis. We have a
Speaker 1: cure for syphilis. But then again you get into the
Speaker 1: problem of detecting it, knowing to report it, et cetera. UM.
Speaker 1: And then even once you've treated syphilis, there's no undoing
Speaker 1: any damage that it's done. UM. So number one, be
Speaker 1: a part of a long term, mutually monogamous relationship with
Speaker 1: a partner who has been tested and has negative STD
Speaker 1: test results. And number two, use latex condoms the right
Speaker 1: way every time you have sex. Condoms prevent transmission of
Speaker 1: syphilis by preventing contact with a sore. Sometimes sores occurring
Speaker 1: areas not covered by a condom. However, in contact with
Speaker 1: these sores can still transmit syphilis. Because again it's about
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it goes through the skin. It's not
Speaker 1: something that travels through the orifice. Now this might surprise you,
Speaker 1: but the people who really need to hear this most
Speaker 1: besides year olds, are senior citizens. Yes, and this surprised me.
Speaker 1: This was some some some interesting material that you discovered. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we actually a while ago we had someone from the
Speaker 1: CDC come and talk to us about STDs. Not because
Speaker 1: our group needed a talking to but because of the
Speaker 1: cyphilis outbreak at work right now, but because every once
Speaker 1: in a while, as someone will come and and sort
Speaker 1: of give us information and and um, it's always very interesting.
Speaker 1: And he had mentioned then that retirement communities, assisted living facilities,
Speaker 1: these are all hotbeds for STDs. And this is in
Speaker 1: part because they are not practicing safe sex. And also
Speaker 1: you have to keep in mind that that for a
Speaker 1: long time, perhaps many of of the community members were
Speaker 1: in long term relationships, but now they probably have lost
Speaker 1: a partner. And it's a very social community. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of sex going on with senior citizens in
Speaker 1: these communities. And numbers from the Centers for Disease Control
Speaker 1: and Prevention show a rapid increase among older people. Were
Speaker 1: talking about between two thousand and seven and two thousand
Speaker 1: and eleven, clamydium infections among Americans six five and over
Speaker 1: increased by thirty one and syphilis by fifty two percent. See,
Speaker 1: I just had I had no idea. I end up
Speaker 1: struggling to try and piece together, like a timeline for
Speaker 1: a hypothetical uh assisted living resident, how they acquire the
Speaker 1: syphilis and then how and then how they end up
Speaker 1: passing it on to multiple people in the facility. They
Speaker 1: just need to get the old posters, you know, in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties and put them back up. And we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about that in the next episode. But there
Speaker 1: were definite campaigns, uh, you know, trying to get some
Speaker 1: sort of awareness going with Americans about STDs. Indeed, yes,
Speaker 1: we'll get into all of that in our next episode
Speaker 1: titled Syphilis through the Ages. Hey, welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind. My name is Robert lamp and Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: This is part two of our little series here on syphilis.
Speaker 1: The first episode, Syphilis the Great Imitator, dealt with the
Speaker 1: the organism that causes syphilis stuff which is known as
Speaker 1: Treponema palladum. Actually it's a subspecies of Trepinema palladum. And
Speaker 1: this is all caused by this tiny, tightly coiled spiral key,
Speaker 1: this little bacterium that ends up causing all of this
Speaker 1: trouble for those that infected. So if you have not
Speaker 1: listened to that first episode, go back, have a listen.
Speaker 1: We will walk you through all the stages of a
Speaker 1: syphilis infection from that that from the tiny annoyances of
Speaker 1: the primary infection on up to the disastrously deforming and
Speaker 1: ultimately lethal stages of tertiary syphilis, as well as the
Speaker 1: treatment of it. Finally, um alright, this has been mentioned
Speaker 1: in the other episode, but it bears mentioning again. The
Speaker 1: first recorded epidemic of narial syphilis occurred in Europe in
Speaker 1: by the close of the fifteenth century, it was pretty
Speaker 1: rampant in fact, in Naples, Italy, there was such a
Speaker 1: huge outbreak that the pope that said, hey, we need
Speaker 1: some help here. Soldiers were brought in, five thousand of them.
Speaker 1: And what do you think happened, Well, they got to
Speaker 1: the prostitutes and they got more syphilis, and then of
Speaker 1: course they just got worse and worse. So what we're
Speaker 1: talking about is is a disease that ravished for centuries
Speaker 1: throughout Europe, and today we're going to try to get
Speaker 1: at the origins of it, and they're gonna try to
Speaker 1: tease out some of the morality that has been paired
Speaker 1: with it, as well as the sort of xenophobia that
Speaker 1: surrounds it as well. Yeahs, As I mentioned before, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of difficult to overstate the importance of
Speaker 1: syphilis in Western culture for the four and a half
Speaker 1: plus centuries um that it that that it was a problem.
Speaker 1: Um And and as we discussed in the last episode,
Speaker 1: syphilis is not eradicated. It is still around the day.
Speaker 1: It's still something to be concerned about, and it's still
Speaker 1: something we have to to treat both with with with
Speaker 1: penicillin and with education. But during the fourteenth century to
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century, it was really permeating the fabric
Speaker 1: of culture. It was rampant. Yes, when we break down
Speaker 1: the percentages of it, it's going to vary depending on
Speaker 1: where in Europe you're looking, but you're generally looking at
Speaker 1: a ten to fifteen percent of the population has syphilis. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, with some degree uh you know, margin for
Speaker 1: air there and then uh upwards of in military because
Speaker 1: event you have younger men who are initially traveling around
Speaker 1: and they are the ones that are spreading it from
Speaker 1: place to place, visiting prostitutes, et cetera. Yeah, and because
Speaker 1: of it's association with Columbus, who sailed under the Spanish flag,
Speaker 1: it was called the Spanish disease for a while, and
Speaker 1: then the French called it the Neopolitan or Italian disease
Speaker 1: because they caught it from residents of Naples, or should
Speaker 1: they say when Naples, of course, was one of the
Speaker 1: major outbreak areas. The Russians called it a Polish disease,
Speaker 1: the Polish called it a Russian disease, and the Turks
Speaker 1: called it a Christian disease, while the English called it
Speaker 1: the French pox. So what do you see here? A
Speaker 1: lot of finger pointing, Yes, it's always the other that
Speaker 1: you blame the disease, and you have to draw that
Speaker 1: firm line in your worldview between we the clean and
Speaker 1: they the diseased, and hope that that line doesn't come
Speaker 1: to envelop you as well. Um, the the Columbus thing
Speaker 1: is so fascinating, and it's a it's a it's a
Speaker 1: point that is continually studied and argued about. But again
Speaker 1: we see that first big outbreak in and as we
Speaker 1: all know, in four Columbus sailed the ocean. So it
Speaker 1: sounds it sounds almost too good to be true, slash
Speaker 1: too horrible to be treat It almost sounds too easy,
Speaker 1: But but we keep coming back to it at time
Speaker 1: and time. Again, here we have Columbus sailing to this
Speaker 1: drastically new land and their contact, be it sexual or
Speaker 1: merely skin on skin is occurring between members of his
Speaker 1: his crew and the native population. And then they return
Speaker 1: to Europe, and then in their wake we see the
Speaker 1: emergence of this, this this powerful illness. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: see a lot of wrongheaded ideas about this, this idea
Speaker 1: of xenophobia, right, this fear of strangers, this idea that
Speaker 1: there are savages that have uh spread this disease to
Speaker 1: Europeans via Columbus. Yeah, you laid with a member of
Speaker 1: another nation, you laid with a member of another another race.
Speaker 1: All these these weird taboos spring up and seemingly in
Speaker 1: concert with the parameters of the illness. As we mentioned before,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that syphilis is such a captivating
Speaker 1: topic is because it's so rife for metaphor, you know,
Speaker 1: be it a metaphor of morality, of a metaphor of racism, nationalism, sexism,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to throw at it. It seems to
Speaker 1: conform to that that form rather nicely. Yeah, now we
Speaker 1: will get back to Columbus and we're going to try
Speaker 1: to get to the origins of of syphilis. But before
Speaker 1: we do, it's just worth it to say that this
Speaker 1: is syphilis. And trying to get to the origins of
Speaker 1: it is really difficult. Um, it's very hard to study.
Speaker 1: There are many strains, some of which don't exist anymore,
Speaker 1: and then you have anecdotal claims throughout the centuries, so
Speaker 1: you can't really pair that with, you know, a systematic
Speaker 1: approach to say, yes, indeed, this was a case of syphilis.
Speaker 1: Because again, as we have mentioned, before. Syphilis is the
Speaker 1: great imitator. So it's very possible that someone had leprosy
Speaker 1: and not syphilis exactly. And and again on that difficult
Speaker 1: to study. Note, you you can't grow syphilis in a culture.
Speaker 1: You can't have a little petrie dish of syphilis. Even today,
Speaker 1: we have to study it in rabbits, so right, you
Speaker 1: have to have it in an actual organism to really
Speaker 1: get a good idea about it. That being said, there
Speaker 1: have been these pre Columbian theories kicked around. In other words,
Speaker 1: this idea of hey, could syphilis have existed before the
Speaker 1: New World, previous to the late fourteen hundreds in the
Speaker 1: old world. That's again called the pre Columbian theory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this this theory is basically that to say that, well,
Speaker 1: when we have other illnesses, and if you look back
Speaker 1: at some accounts of leprosy, you might say, well that
Speaker 1: that account of leprosy doesn't match up as well with
Speaker 1: our modern understanding of leprosy. Perhaps that was a different ailment,
Speaker 1: Perhaps that was in fact syphilis. And instead we're just
Speaker 1: kind of latching onto this easy explanation of Columbus. Since
Speaker 1: this groundbreaking expedition takes place just a few years before
Speaker 1: this major outbreak. But of course the world good because
Speaker 1: I mean it makes sense, right, I mean, the world
Speaker 1: is more complicated than one ship sailing off and coming back.
Speaker 1: There are other movements going on in the world. It's
Speaker 1: a time of great change. People are moving around, not
Speaker 1: only throughout Europe, but you have movements going into into
Speaker 1: into Asia and Africa. So what so why not? Why
Speaker 1: why could there not be another route for this illness
Speaker 1: to take? And we'll discuss that, we'll really try to
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of this. But so when we
Speaker 1: call when we say pre Columbian, we're talking about Old World.
Speaker 1: When we talk about Columbia and we're talking about New World.
Speaker 1: Generally here, old world is Europe, Old world is is
Speaker 1: Western civilization. New World the America's Columbia, etcetera. Right, And
Speaker 1: if you're going to talk about New World, you have
Speaker 1: to talk about something called yaws and facial Now, these
Speaker 1: are tropical diseases that are closely related to Troponema palladum,
Speaker 1: which is of course syphilis, although they are different. Bagel
Speaker 1: causes mouth stores and lumps in the bone, and yaws
Speaker 1: caused skin stores and disfiguring growths on the legs. So
Speaker 1: of course they're they're related to syphilis, but they are
Speaker 1: non venereal, right, they're spread through skin to skin contact,
Speaker 1: They're not. They're they're not straight up venereal diseases. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, granted you could catch them in skin to
Speaker 1: skin contact during sexual intercourse, but they're not depending on
Speaker 1: that as their mode of transmission. Yeah, but these are
Speaker 1: all trimp and emial diseases that are These are all
Speaker 1: close relatives of the subspecies of Trimpanema pallatum that causes syphilis.
Speaker 1: And we bring them up because they're important to study
Speaker 1: if you're if you're trying to look at where cyphilis,
Speaker 1: syphilis originated from, then you're gonna want to look at
Speaker 1: yaws and basil because paleo pathologists Bruce and Christine Rothschild
Speaker 1: use that information to point toward a new world origin
Speaker 1: of syphilis. And they examined six eighties seven skeletons from
Speaker 1: archaeological sites in the US. We're talking about arranging an
Speaker 1: age from four hundred to six thousand years and what
Speaker 1: they found is that populations to the south look to
Speaker 1: have syphilis while those to the north had yaws. And
Speaker 1: then by contrast, they examined one thousand Old World skeletons
Speaker 1: dating to before contact with the New World, and they
Speaker 1: found zero cases of syphilis. So this kind of gets
Speaker 1: you onto the route of, well, maybe the New World
Speaker 1: did have the case of syphilis, although it's not that
Speaker 1: clear cut, as well discussed, and this leads us to
Speaker 1: what is called the Unitarian hypothesis, which has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with unitarians in the religious sense of the world,
Speaker 1: where don't worry, unitarians, We're not We're not nailing this
Speaker 1: one on you. Unitarian in the sense of that that
Speaker 1: it unites the Old World and New World hypotheses regarding
Speaker 1: the emergence of syphilis in Europe. The basic idea here
Speaker 1: is that you do have Columbus and New sailors setting
Speaker 1: sail from Europe to the New World to the America's
Speaker 1: and when they're there, they do come into skin to
Speaker 1: skin contact sexual and non sexual with natives there, and
Speaker 1: then they end up acquiring trimpanemal diseases. Now you know, again,
Speaker 1: think to the jewel, think to to tin, to think
Speaker 1: to yaws, but not necessarily syphilis proper. But they bring
Speaker 1: back a relative of syphilis and they bring it back
Speaker 1: to a drastically new incubation world. We're talking about a
Speaker 1: different environment because in the in the America's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: individuals syphilis they're gonna largely be in you know, smaller communities.
Speaker 1: But then you bring them to a European port town.
Speaker 1: You bring it to a world where individuals are wearing
Speaker 1: more clothes, thus allowing for less skin on skin contact.
Speaker 1: You're bringing it to a world where you have brothels,
Speaker 1: a world where you have tiny ships tightly packed with
Speaker 1: men sailing from one port to the next port throughout Europe.
Speaker 1: And what happens, according to this hypothesis is that the
Speaker 1: the tremponamal disease changes and and we get this subspecies
Speaker 1: of Tremponema palladum that causes syphilis as we know it.
Speaker 1: So it is a story of mutation under new environmental circumstances. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if anyone is interested in taking a deeper dive into
Speaker 1: this and and some of the skeletal evidence behind this,
Speaker 1: there is a paper two thousand and toll paper called
Speaker 1: the science behind pre Columbian evidence of Syphilis and Europe
Speaker 1: Research by Documentary and that goes into this, uh much more.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to quote Molly Zuckerman. She's one of
Speaker 1: the authors of paper, and she says, in reality, it
Speaker 1: appears that venereal syphilis was the byproduct of two different
Speaker 1: populations meeting and exchanging a pathogen. It was an adaptive event,
Speaker 1: the natural selection of a disease, independent of morality or blame. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not as situation of, Ah, those sinful sailors are
Speaker 1: all those diseased natives in this new world. It's it's
Speaker 1: something more complicated than that. Yeah. And you know, at
Speaker 1: the outset of this, the researchers for those paper, they
Speaker 1: really wanted to to sort of disprove this idea that
Speaker 1: Columbus and his crew were vectors for syphilis, because I thought,
Speaker 1: it can't be that just you know, Columbus and his
Speaker 1: his guys hung out in America and then brought it
Speaker 1: back to Europe and spread syphilis all over the place.
Speaker 1: Can't be that simple. And it's not that simple, um,
Speaker 1: you know, because the trick here is that it mutated,
Speaker 1: it adapted rather um. But they really they went into
Speaker 1: it with the intent of saying, nah, it can't be yeah,
Speaker 1: because it does sound like something you would read and
Speaker 1: sort of conspiracy theory kind of message board, right, like, well,
Speaker 1: these two dates line up, we can correlate this a
Speaker 1: little bit. Therefore that must be what happened. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, we do want to drive home that these
Speaker 1: are all hypotheses and that this is own area that
Speaker 1: everyone that there are a lot of papers that come
Speaker 1: out about this. There's a lot of discussion, a lot
Speaker 1: of argument, loss did, a lot of disagreement. So there's
Speaker 1: no definitive answer here, and it may indeed be one
Speaker 1: of those areas where we never have a definitive answer.
Speaker 1: It's true. And uh, you know that the researchers who
Speaker 1: worked on that paper also worked on some of them
Speaker 1: worked on a different paper looking at fifty four published
Speaker 1: reports of pre Columbian evidence and skeletal remains of syphilis,
Speaker 1: and they found there that again there wasn't enough supporting
Speaker 1: information and real evidence to say that it existed in
Speaker 1: its form of syphilis as we know and talk about
Speaker 1: it now in the old world. So again, there seems
Speaker 1: to be some sort of direction here in terms of
Speaker 1: the way that the river is streaming with information, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that this is the endpoint of the
Speaker 1: origins of syphilis. And we're going to talk about more
Speaker 1: of the sort of sights and sounds and smells of
Speaker 1: what it might be like in a syphilitic era in Europe.
Speaker 1: And uh, I wanted to just read this. This is
Speaker 1: from the BBC, A Cultural History of Syphilis, says in
Speaker 1: the fourteen nineties, and apparently new and terrifying disease struck
Speaker 1: naples in southern Italy and swept fire like across Europe,
Speaker 1: reaping a dreadful human cost. It must have been as
Speaker 1: though Hell had come to earth. Pustules spread across the
Speaker 1: genitals and the face of its many sufferers. Unbearable gastro
Speaker 1: intestinal pain followed upon fevers, screamingly severe headaches and other symptoms. Finally,
Speaker 1: flush fell from bones. Syphilis had arrived in Europe, where
Speaker 1: it would stay misunderstood, lacking any form of cure for
Speaker 1: nearly five years. Yeah, that's that's pretty rough sounding. Um.
Speaker 1: And again, remember that this was not a disease that
Speaker 1: affected just the poor. This was a disease that affected
Speaker 1: rich and poor alike, that affected royalty and peasant, that
Speaker 1: affected clergy members, anyone that was engaging in sexual contact.
Speaker 1: Uh ran the risk a high risk of acquiring uh,
Speaker 1: this this illness. And yeah, this was not a quiet
Speaker 1: sort of illness. I mean, people could smell you before
Speaker 1: you even came around. And we're talking about rotting flesh.
Speaker 1: We are talking about your face bearing the marks of syphilis,
Speaker 1: your body bearing the marks of it. In fact, you
Speaker 1: could even kind of see it as a sort of
Speaker 1: scarlet letter a brought into your flesh. Yeah. Again, the
Speaker 1: metaphorical power of syphilis is unavoidable here because you already
Speaker 1: have the idea, uh, in Western culture, that that physical
Speaker 1: deformities may signal inner deformities, that that that that an
Speaker 1: inner sin can have a fleshly manifestation. And it's super
Speaker 1: easy to apply that line of thinking to syphilis, because
Speaker 1: here's something that spread through sex. Here is something that's
Speaker 1: spread through uh through sin, if you will, and and
Speaker 1: then has these these terrifying physical um manifestations, certainly in
Speaker 1: its later stages. So it's it's easy then for someone
Speaker 1: to point the figure and say this, this is the way.
Speaker 1: These are the wages of sin right here. All you
Speaker 1: have to do is look at this individual, look at
Speaker 1: the look at the sores on their body, look at
Speaker 1: the deformities of their facial feature, look what has happened
Speaker 1: to them? Uh, And and so you see this just
Speaker 1: throughout it, So throughout its four and a half centuries
Speaker 1: of unchecked rampaging, and even beyond into the twentieth century
Speaker 1: and even into the twenty one there's there's a moral
Speaker 1: aspect to syphilis and to other venereal diseases. This is
Speaker 1: something you caught because you were doing something that was wrong.
Speaker 1: Like that's the script that is often applied to the scenario. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and now people have the sort of calling card hallmarks
Speaker 1: of that disease. Right. They look at you and they say, oh,
Speaker 1: let me see you've you've got a nasty rash there,
Speaker 1: you lost your hair um, perhaps your nose is even
Speaker 1: caving in into what's called saddle nose. And so what
Speaker 1: do people do, Well, they try to find anything and
Speaker 1: everything that might cover up their transgressions or what would
Speaker 1: be perceived as transgressions. Right, And bear in mind again
Speaker 1: through all of this, that there are no set of
Speaker 1: standard symptoms for syphilis, and there are stages where it's undetectable.
Speaker 1: So so every everyone's going crazy with ways to detect
Speaker 1: and treat it. While the illness itself is is so
Speaker 1: difficult to get your hands on. It's the great imitator,
Speaker 1: it's the it's the great hider um. So yeah, bad
Speaker 1: stuff is happening to your body in in the varying
Speaker 1: stages of syphilis. So one thing you might do is,
Speaker 1: of course, you may cover things up. Since we were
Speaker 1: wearing clothes, we're wearing makeup. You can apply clothing and
Speaker 1: makeup to cover up your source. Yeah. In fact, syphilis
Speaker 1: just creates this whole cottage industry of of different things
Speaker 1: you can buy and do to either feel better or
Speaker 1: look better. So there might be some sort of snake
Speaker 1: oil that you can buy right that has absolutely no
Speaker 1: medical merit. Or you might visit your local wig maker
Speaker 1: quite a bit, because again you want to cover up
Speaker 1: the bald patch on your head or the baldness so
Speaker 1: that people don't suspect that you have syphilis. And if
Speaker 1: you are a prostitute, American is a must, because yeah,
Speaker 1: you might be saving your pubic care any way to
Speaker 1: cut down on lights, but then you also might have
Speaker 1: an outbreak of syphilis down there. You want to disguise
Speaker 1: the signs, so you get a wig for your genitals,
Speaker 1: also called American, which is not a Muppet character. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they apparently used a lot now in for films, especially
Speaker 1: historical films. Yeah, but historically it was more a matter
Speaker 1: of venereal diseases for the men. Generally wasn't really an
Speaker 1: option because the well there's just more to cover up
Speaker 1: down there, and uh, just do a Google immed search,
Speaker 1: she'll see what I'm talking about. All right, Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are some logisticks there that you can't quite uh cover
Speaker 1: with American But what happens when your nose caves in
Speaker 1: and your flesh begins to rot away, Well, h this
Speaker 1: creates a problem. And in general it was kind of
Speaker 1: a rough time for noses anyway. If you remember the
Speaker 1: story of Tico Brahy, the the astronomer, I think we
Speaker 1: did an episode on him, or at least he's come
Speaker 1: he comes up a time. Yeah, yeah, fascinating individual. Um.
Speaker 1: There may be some biographers that that creep syphilis in there,
Speaker 1: but but I think it's pretty established that that he
Speaker 1: lost the nose in a duel. So on on one level,
Speaker 1: you can lose that nose in a duel living an
Speaker 1: adventurous lifestyle, getting yourselves into arguments with other armed a gentleman.
Speaker 1: But you can also acquire sephilis through your adventurous lifestyle.
Speaker 1: And then you see the saddle nose, the eventual rotting
Speaker 1: away of the nose. So one thing you can do
Speaker 1: is you can buy a fake nose to where over
Speaker 1: your destroyed nose. And this is this is as simple
Speaker 1: as its ounds. If you've ever seen a digital underground
Speaker 1: video and you've seen Humpty Hump with the big fake
Speaker 1: nos on his on his face, who incidentally, according to
Speaker 1: the backstory, lost it in a frying accident, I believe so,
Speaker 1: so no dueling or syphilis involved with Humpty. But but
Speaker 1: it's basically the same scenario, a fake NOS that is
Speaker 1: strapped onto the body or held with wires over the
Speaker 1: over the the the vacant area. Yeah, in fact, and
Speaker 1: this is according to Lindsay fitz Harris, who is a
Speaker 1: medical historian and writes on the Chiujian Apprentice, which is
Speaker 1: a great website documenting medical surgeries. She writes that this
Speaker 1: deformity was so common amongst these suffering from the pots,
Speaker 1: as it was sometimes called, that no nose clubs sprung
Speaker 1: up in London. On February eighteen seventy four, The Star
Speaker 1: reported Miss Sanborn tells us that an eccentric gentleman, having
Speaker 1: taken taken a fancy to see a large party of
Speaker 1: noseless persons, invited everyone thus afflicted whom he met in
Speaker 1: the streets to dine on a certain day at a
Speaker 1: tavern where he formed them into a brotherhood. And on
Speaker 1: this site again that Lindsay fitz Harris has put together,
Speaker 1: there is a great example of one of these sort
Speaker 1: of noses that's attached to a pair of glasses, that's
Speaker 1: attached to a sort of almost looks like a headgear,
Speaker 1: like early headgear braces. And it's one that that a
Speaker 1: female patient war Yeah, and you can imagine that worn
Speaker 1: with a wig, and it makes makes perfect sense. And
Speaker 1: you know, the no Nose Club also makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense because if you're you're dealing with this illness,
Speaker 1: you're having to cover yourself up and where this this
Speaker 1: this fake nose over your your your face. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's gonna come a time when you want to be
Speaker 1: able to just take that off and be yourself, no
Speaker 1: matter what has happened to yourself in this illness. You
Speaker 1: want to be able to just say, hey, here we are.
Speaker 1: We may not have noses anymore because of this illness,
Speaker 1: but hey, we're people, and we want to look at
Speaker 1: each other like we're people and and not worry about
Speaker 1: oh whatsever and all these other people that don't have syphilis,
Speaker 1: or don't realize they have syphilis, or in other stages
Speaker 1: of the illness are looking at me and judging me
Speaker 1: for for what I am, and making judgments about my
Speaker 1: moral character based on what has happened. Well, and fitz
Speaker 1: Harris has that blog post Syphilis a Love Story which
Speaker 1: essentially talks about this, and I believe it is miss
Speaker 1: Sanborne who eventually takes the fake nose off at her
Speaker 1: husband's request because he accepts her as she is. You know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I was listening to that to BBC program,
Speaker 1: the Cultural History of Syphilis, which I'll link to on
Speaker 1: the landing page for this podcast episode. But they go
Speaker 1: into some of the cases of individuals, particularly in the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, who end up, if not finding pride in
Speaker 1: their syphilitic appearance, they at least, you know, come to
Speaker 1: own it. Uh. You see individuals like Sir William davenant
Speaker 1: Um sixteen o six through sixteen sixty eight as a poet, playwright,
Speaker 1: and he was famously not shy about being painted or
Speaker 1: depicted in artwork without a false nose. So you see
Speaker 1: a very sunken saddle nose, you know, almost a vacant um,
Speaker 1: you know, part of his facial features. And he was,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty upfront about it. Um. Another instance, you
Speaker 1: have artist Gerard Delorice one through seventeen eleven, who was
Speaker 1: actually a prominent painter. Uh and uh and he was
Speaker 1: born with congenital syphilis. Um. And he he was. There's
Speaker 1: actually a painting of him by Rembrandt, which I'll put
Speaker 1: on the blog for everyone to see because it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a Rembrandt piece, so it's it's splendid to behold.
Speaker 1: But here's an individual who you know, he's setting for
Speaker 1: a portrait. He's he's he's open and uh and free
Speaker 1: about who he is. You know, he's not trying to
Speaker 1: hide it at this point. And you see a number
Speaker 1: of individuals say um, John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester,
Speaker 1: who was portrayed by Johnny Depp in the movie of Libertine. Um.
Speaker 1: You see individuals like this who basically say, yeah, I
Speaker 1: have syphilis, I have had a wildlife and the wages
Speaker 1: of having that wildlife are syphilis. So it's it's almost
Speaker 1: like a badge of honor. Yeah, it's like when you
Speaker 1: hear I've heard people say point at rock stars aging
Speaker 1: rock stars, and you know, say, oh, they look rough,
Speaker 1: but they partied hard to get there, you know, to
Speaker 1: say that, you know, what has happened to them is
Speaker 1: like a badge of honor because it says they have
Speaker 1: enjoyed their younger life and that is why, uh, their
Speaker 1: their older form is so decrepit. And that's what you're
Speaker 1: seeing in some of these individuals. Now, granted, these are
Speaker 1: individuals that we're living at the in the upper echelon
Speaker 1: of society, so they had a little more room too,
Speaker 1: you know, to grab onto that pride. They weren't dying
Speaker 1: of syphilis, uh, you know, in the slums. And likewise,
Speaker 1: some of these individuals too also had taken to various
Speaker 1: um ideas about how syphilis could beach read it. So
Speaker 1: they thought that perhaps their their syphilis was being treated
Speaker 1: and managed by regular mercury treatments in one of those
Speaker 1: mercury steam baths, which, as we mentioned in the previous episode,
Speaker 1: may you know, was was likely making their symptoms worse.
Speaker 1: In some cases, so they thought that a they were
Speaker 1: above sort of some of the social rules in place
Speaker 1: because of their position and society, and be that they
Speaker 1: might have been vanquishing it. So they were uh, not
Speaker 1: quite as concerned about how they looked. Perhaps, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: if you're take and if you're looking at the body
Speaker 1: from a less religious standpoint, and you're looking at more
Speaker 1: from a hedonistic or even mechanical standpoint, you then you're saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I live in a world in which syphilis exists, and
Speaker 1: if I behave a certain way, syphilis is what happens
Speaker 1: to my body. You know. Um, some of these cases too,
Speaker 1: you see individuals where they they're they're they're almost happy
Speaker 1: when they finally catch syphilis because it means, if nothing else,
Speaker 1: it means they don't have to worry about syphilis anymore.
Speaker 1: You know. They're they're they're no longer living in the
Speaker 1: shadow of syphilis, but within the dark of syphilis. And
Speaker 1: you can see where there might be a certain amount
Speaker 1: of empowerment there. Certainly, if you have to latch onto something,
Speaker 1: you might as well latch onto that, although again you'd
Speaker 1: have to be in a really specific social position to
Speaker 1: do that, and you'd have to be a male for certain. No. Yes, indeed, now,
Speaker 1: if you had the money, the wherewithal, and you did
Speaker 1: not want to wear a fake nose, or you weren't
Speaker 1: ready to come out to the world that you had syphilis,
Speaker 1: then you would try a kind of nasal reconstruction, which
Speaker 1: in the sixteenth century was called the Indian method, and
Speaker 1: this involved cutting a nose sized section of skin from
Speaker 1: the forehead. So there's again another calling card or hallmark
Speaker 1: that you have the disease, because your nose looks great,
Speaker 1: but you've got a big patch of skins, but you
Speaker 1: have a really big wig. That that's true. That's true,
Speaker 1: you have a nice wig. But they take that skin
Speaker 1: from the foe and they would attach it to the
Speaker 1: bridge of the nose to maintain a steady blood supply.
Speaker 1: And then that flap was twisted into place and sewn
Speaker 1: over the damaged area, which kind of created a replacement nose.
Speaker 1: But again it wasn't perfect, and you know, really cold weather,
Speaker 1: it would not turn the same color as the rest
Speaker 1: of your nose. So there were certain telltale signs that
Speaker 1: it may look like an intech nose, but it is not.
Speaker 1: Your perhaps knows that you are born with. But it
Speaker 1: turns out that there's a better and perhaps more horrific
Speaker 1: way to take a stab at plastic surgery or early
Speaker 1: plastic surgery. You know what. It is tempting to say
Speaker 1: it's horrific, but it but in another way, it's kind
Speaker 1: of beautiful and it gets it how malleable our flesh
Speaker 1: really is because again modern plastic surgery, the plastic is
Speaker 1: referring to the plasticity of the flesh, that you can
Speaker 1: craft flesh into a form. Yeah. And actually this method
Speaker 1: did and does inform plastic surgeons of out how skin
Speaker 1: grows and how you can mold it and and sculpt it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, in this we see uh, the sixteenth century
Speaker 1: advent of the Italian method. Now to to picture this, um,
Speaker 1: if you don't have an image of it in front
Speaker 1: of you, um. And and if you're not driving a
Speaker 1: car doing anything where you need your hands place, place
Speaker 1: your your palm of your hand, uh kind of on
Speaker 1: your forehead, okay, and then allow your nose to to
Speaker 1: touch your arm. That is basically the position where the
Speaker 1: surgeon would would lock your arm into place. There would
Speaker 1: be like a head vice type of scenario going on,
Speaker 1: so that you could not move your arm away. You
Speaker 1: cannot move your the flesh of your arm away from
Speaker 1: the flesh of your face. And then that's where you
Speaker 1: perform the the the skin graft. You walk a pedicle
Speaker 1: of flesh, you sort of cut it away from the forearm,
Speaker 1: and you stitch it into place where the nose should be,
Speaker 1: in place of the nose that you've lost to syphilis
Speaker 1: or duels or what have you, and then that's held
Speaker 1: in place while the the the grafted skin grows onto
Speaker 1: the face. So for a brief period of time, you
Speaker 1: have effectively sown your arm, or a surgeon has effectively
Speaker 1: sown your arm to your face. And then once the
Speaker 1: graft has taken then you cut the arm away from
Speaker 1: it and you've you've essentially walked as a piece of
Speaker 1: flesh off of your arm onto your face and then
Speaker 1: use that to form a new nose, which is kind
Speaker 1: of brilliant. Honestly. You ask a plastic surgeon about this
Speaker 1: and they'll be like, this is a great way to
Speaker 1: try to get the skin to graft onto other skin
Speaker 1: and then be able to shape it um. The only
Speaker 1: problem here is that for about two weeks you're walking
Speaker 1: around with your your hand stuff to your head and
Speaker 1: you can't really move your nose right because that's now
Speaker 1: stuck to you your arm. Yeah, I'm guessing you're probably
Speaker 1: not doing a whole lot of walking around town like that,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, there's gonna be a weird period there.
Speaker 1: But you know, the Italian method, it's a remarkable what
Speaker 1: it can do. Like it may be summoning images of
Speaker 1: like a really bad plastic surgery job or something, but
Speaker 1: I've I've seen some images, particularly like particularly late eighteen
Speaker 1: hundred's early nineteen hundreds, in which you see multiple pedicles
Speaker 1: of flesh that are essentially walked up the body to
Speaker 1: the face to repair individuals who say lost their lower
Speaker 1: jaw uh to to two gunshot wound. Uh And then
Speaker 1: you're able to walk all these pedicles up to the
Speaker 1: face and it looks kind of ghastly at first, but
Speaker 1: then you start putting them in their place, and at
Speaker 1: the end of the of this series of procedures, you
Speaker 1: have a much more uh normal looking visage uh there
Speaker 1: in place of the damage tissue. So in in in
Speaker 1: this scenario, we see the impact of syphilis on early
Speaker 1: rhino pass plastic in Europe, but we also see other
Speaker 1: ways in which syphilis ends up changing the way that
Speaker 1: that that medicine is practiced uh through throughout the the
Speaker 1: old world. For instance, immediately it allunge humorism and the
Speaker 1: doctrine of contagion. That was probably another day. Um. We
Speaker 1: also see syphilis as a catalyst for modern doctor patient confidentiality,
Speaker 1: because suddenly it becomes a kind of a calling card
Speaker 1: for some doctors. Hey, let me treat you for your
Speaker 1: syphilist because I'll keep it on the download. Now, we
Speaker 1: just kind of take that for granted that we go
Speaker 1: into a doctor, they're not going to blab about syphilis
Speaker 1: to everyone in the neighborhood. This is another key fact
Speaker 1: that was brought up in the book Cleaned by Virginia
Speaker 1: Smith that have referenced before in podcast, and that is
Speaker 1: that previously you had you'd go into your your local
Speaker 1: barber shop and you'd have the barber tonsors in the
Speaker 1: front of barber surgeons in the back. You can have
Speaker 1: your haircut, your face shaved, all of that that take
Speaker 1: place in the front of the building and go into
Speaker 1: the back, into the yard or what have you. That's
Speaker 1: where you would receive minor surgeries. That's where you would
Speaker 1: uh take a bath, uh and stand later as the
Speaker 1: as syphilis begins to spread, that's where you start getting
Speaker 1: treated for civilis that's where you might take your mercury bath.
Speaker 1: And so the prevalence of the disease and fear regarding
Speaker 1: the disease, this really leads to regulation. This really this
Speaker 1: leads to of course, you know, paranoia. And so you
Speaker 1: see the two separates. So you see the separation of
Speaker 1: the barber tonsor and the barber surgeon. It's right because
Speaker 1: that red and white striped barber pole used to indicate
Speaker 1: that there are surgeries done there. Right in case anybody's
Speaker 1: ever wondered why, um, that pole is outside of a
Speaker 1: hair cuttery, all right, So that's this impact on on
Speaker 1: on medicine, in medical surgeries, um, as well as cottage
Speaker 1: industries like wig makers, right, and people who are are
Speaker 1: selling you know, snake oils. But there are certain things
Speaker 1: that you cannot cover up here when it comes to syphilis.
Speaker 1: And one of the things would be your teeth. Now,
Speaker 1: you could pull all your teeth, you could put denters in,
Speaker 1: but if you didn't want to do that, you're kind
Speaker 1: of saddled with the ravages of your teeth bicyphilis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and one of the more one of the more particular
Speaker 1: things we see here with the teeth is something that
Speaker 1: pops up in cases of congenital syphilis, and that's something
Speaker 1: known as Hutchinson teeth. These are, you know, as with
Speaker 1: all things syphilis, the exact symptoms vary, but this is
Speaker 1: often typified by sharpened looking teeth or peg shaped teeth
Speaker 1: that kind of have sharpened points on the edges. Um.
Speaker 1: You can look for for image of this online. I
Speaker 1: think I had, and actually I did a blog post
Speaker 1: um that I'll link to on the landing page for
Speaker 1: this podcast episode that includes, uh, the image that Julian
Speaker 1: and I are both looking at now. But they do
Speaker 1: have a kind of monstrous appearance. These are like sharpened
Speaker 1: teeth inside of a human mouth, particularly canine teeth. Yes,
Speaker 1: And so we start to look at this for a
Speaker 1: little bit, and uh, naturally you your mind would turn
Speaker 1: to vampire teeth because that's kind of what this looks like.
Speaker 1: It looks like a sort of non sperato version of
Speaker 1: vampire teeth. Yeah, And it's led us some commentators to
Speaker 1: argue that the the evolution of the vampire myth in
Speaker 1: in Western civilization may have connections to cases of congenital
Speaker 1: or hereditary syphilis. The children are born like this, they
Speaker 1: have this kind they could have in addition to these teeth,
Speaker 1: they may also have elongated fingers, they may have elongated skull.
Speaker 1: There various other deformities that might be interpreted as monstrous
Speaker 1: by by somebody taking in the scenario um and another
Speaker 1: connection between vampires and syphilis arguably takes us to brom
Speaker 1: Stoker himself, the author of the book A Dracula. And
Speaker 1: another area where vampires and syphilis seem to converge uh
Speaker 1: is in the case of the eight novel Dracula by
Speaker 1: Bram Stoker. Now brom Stoker's exact cause of death and
Speaker 1: he died in nineteen twelve, it remains, you know, somewhat
Speaker 1: something of a mystery. But some biographers a tribute as
Speaker 1: death to tertiary syphilis and make the further argument that
Speaker 1: Dracula itself, as a literary work is is kind of
Speaker 1: reflecting not only the paranoia regarding syphilis that's present in
Speaker 1: the culture, but also Stoker's own uh experience with the
Speaker 1: illness itself. Because you look at vampires, you look at
Speaker 1: tracula and you see uh, something that is at once
Speaker 1: sexual and monstrous. You see this this uh, this outsider
Speaker 1: that has come to in this case to England and
Speaker 1: is spreading this uh, this illness of vamporism. This uh,
Speaker 1: this this alien pathogen to to to to two women
Speaker 1: in the in the in the area. Yes, they are
Speaker 1: puncturing the women. Right. So again you have to use
Speaker 1: that metaphor which always comes up sex and vampires, right. Um,
Speaker 1: In fact, there is You send me this link to
Speaker 1: a class that's offered the says the Vampire in Literature
Speaker 1: and Cinema, taught by Tommys slav Lojnovich, who is a
Speaker 1: professor of Slavic and comparative literature, and he uses that
Speaker 1: vampire lore to explore folklore explanations of disease epidemics, Which
Speaker 1: makes sense, right, especially if you're you're caught up in this.
Speaker 1: You'll say, it's the sixteenth century, is the seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: and this is this pervasive disease and you have all
Speaker 1: of these sort of myths surrounding it. It's possible that
Speaker 1: that people could sort of extrapolate like maybe there are vampires,
Speaker 1: maybe this is how it's being spread. Yeah, because again
Speaker 1: four and a half centuries in which we could not
Speaker 1: cure it. So you're throwing what you can at. You're throwing,
Speaker 1: you're throwing actual research, you're throwing snake oil, you're throwing mercury,
Speaker 1: steam baths, you're throwing religion. And again, you know, because
Speaker 1: again it just can't be It can't be overstated, the
Speaker 1: the connection between between morality and en syphilis here and
Speaker 1: at least in the way that that people tried to
Speaker 1: understand it, or at least ended up viewing it in society.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, you're throw in a little myth in there,
Speaker 1: you throw a little magical thinking and and and there
Speaker 1: you go. You can easily see the vampire emerged. Nothing
Speaker 1: concrete there, but some food for thought. Yeah, which maybe
Speaker 1: why a vampire in the form of Count spiro Keet
Speaker 1: shows up in a Navy video in the seventies talking
Speaker 1: about STDs. Right, Yes, and you can watch this. I
Speaker 1: linked to the video on a blog post I did
Speaker 1: for Stuff to Blow your Mind. It's actually a fabulous documentary.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the style of of Schoolhouse Rocks and uh,
Speaker 1: and it has a Scooby Doo element to it as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's very silly. Look. Even when they get into
Speaker 1: some of the rougher stuff, such as congenital syphilis or
Speaker 1: or actually showing illustrations of genitals, it's like the setup
Speaker 1: is very cartoon. It's Death himself is having an awards
Speaker 1: ceremony handing out the coveted fourth Horseman Award for a
Speaker 1: disease that's that's done the best work in causing misery
Speaker 1: and death around the world. And who should win it
Speaker 1: but count spirow Keet, who represents syphilis. Uh, the the
Speaker 1: embodiment of gnaia takes some issue with it. Some of
Speaker 1: the other illnesses are like, what's so great about sparrow keyt,
Speaker 1: what's he doing? There's a cure for it, blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and so Death and spirow Keet, mainly Death goes on
Speaker 1: to explain to us why how selphialist works and why
Speaker 1: it is a problem, and why enlisted navy men, why
Speaker 1: why sailors should be on guard and should go seek
Speaker 1: treatment for any time they have any kind of a
Speaker 1: flare out, which kind of gets into this whole rich
Speaker 1: tradition of the military trying to bring a level of
Speaker 1: awareness of STDs to UH to everyone. In fact, if
Speaker 1: you go back to War one in wor World two, UH,
Speaker 1: you will see all sorts of pamphlets and posters warning
Speaker 1: military members to be very careful to watch out for SIFF,
Speaker 1: watch out for ganaia. And it even remind me of
Speaker 1: our quarantine episode in which we talked about the U. S.
Speaker 1: Military quarantining prostitutes in an attempt to try to separate
Speaker 1: what they thought is disease carrying prostitutes with STDs from
Speaker 1: military members. Yeah, so you have you have these campaigns
Speaker 1: that are basically in essence saying, hey, sailors, when you
Speaker 1: go into the next port town, please stay away from
Speaker 1: the prostitutes because you could catch syphilis and it's bad news.
Speaker 1: And you have to bear in mind too that even
Speaker 1: after the advent of penicillin, you'll have situations, particularly in wartime,
Speaker 1: where there's there's not an unlimited amount of penicillan to
Speaker 1: throw at at your your navy men's venereal diseases. You have,
Speaker 1: you have that a lot of that penicilla is earmarked
Speaker 1: for the battlefield for for use in helping with soldiers
Speaker 1: have been injured in combat. You don't want to spend
Speaker 1: it all just on a bunch of horny sailors who
Speaker 1: can't control themselves when they go into a farm port
Speaker 1: of call. So they're throwing education at the problem as well.
Speaker 1: But there's speaking to a male audience, and and so
Speaker 1: the messaging tends to take on a very sexist feel. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the posters which I'm looking at
Speaker 1: right now is a really good example. It's this, Um
Speaker 1: it's a photograph of a girl that looks, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of innocent and pure and you know, very Norman Rockwell,
Speaker 1: like this is the Norman Rockwell cow. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: very Norman Rockwell. In fact, she has this sort of
Speaker 1: beatific smile on as if you know she's doing godly work.
Speaker 1: And then there are you know, some servicemen who are
Speaker 1: looking at her at a distance. And across this poster
Speaker 1: it says she may look clean, but and the butt
Speaker 1: isn't an all red and all caps, and it says
Speaker 1: pick ups good time girls. Prostitutes spread syphilis and gonorrhea.
Speaker 1: You can't beat the axis is if you get v D.
Speaker 1: And at what I think is so interesting about this
Speaker 1: is that there are many other posters that have more
Speaker 1: I don't know what you say, tawdry looking women that
Speaker 1: there are basically saying their prostitutes. But then you have
Speaker 1: this other sort of like I said, be to fix smiled,
Speaker 1: innocent looking girl. And the point is, as you say,
Speaker 1: is that they're speaking to men, and um, they're really
Speaker 1: underscoring this idea that STDs veneral, that Jesus all begin
Speaker 1: with women, and that they are the font of evil. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean there's this darkness in the woman. It's almost
Speaker 1: like the like the feminine form as monster is the
Speaker 1: message here and and you see again you do see
Speaker 1: some more fantastic, horrific visions of this. There's one where
Speaker 1: the woman is like moving a handheld mask away from
Speaker 1: her face and behind it there's a death skull. Um.
Speaker 1: The Salvador Dollis illustration that he did for an anti
Speaker 1: syphilis poster in which you see the two buxom women. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it kind of melting kind of, but they
Speaker 1: look like a death skull. You know. It's one of
Speaker 1: those one of his classic style images where you see
Speaker 1: the death's head uh in the form of the women.
Speaker 1: I'll be sure to throw that on stuff to your
Speaker 1: mind dot com as well. So everyone can see it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, weren't you telling me about the sixteenth century
Speaker 1: hypothesis of the woman as really the germanator of syphilis. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was this notion that to syphilis emerged because you
Speaker 1: had you had women, you had prostitutes who were having
Speaker 1: sex with multiple men. Uh, and then those semens would
Speaker 1: those different seeds would be inside her and they would
Speaker 1: mingle together and corrupt into the form of syphilis. So
Speaker 1: with and you know, they had no one there was
Speaker 1: no proof to back up this ridiculous theory, but it
Speaker 1: did place the blame firmly on on women and very
Speaker 1: moralistically as well. These women are are sinning and therefore
Speaker 1: you have sickness arising from them. They are the source
Speaker 1: of of the ailment itself. Yeah, and uh, not not
Speaker 1: to get too crazy here, but it just kind of
Speaker 1: brings me back to this idea of witches. And we
Speaker 1: talked about which is and we talked about, you know,
Speaker 1: the power of women and sexuality. And again here we
Speaker 1: are subscribing this sort of power, this death to women
Speaker 1: in the form of syphilis. And uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know that that's what all the poster artists intended,
Speaker 1: but it certainly captured the spirit of the times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and again they were talking to a predominantly male audience.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned before, even in UH, you know, over
Speaker 1: the centuries that syphilis was really ravaging Europe, you saw
Speaker 1: the highest percentages of infection uh in the in the
Speaker 1: in the soldiers are certainly a higher percentage than in
Speaker 1: the rest of the population. So soldiers and prostitutes were
Speaker 1: a key area of transference. Indeed. All right, so there
Speaker 1: you have it again. There's just there's not enough time
Speaker 1: and even in a series of podcasts to really get
Speaker 1: into all the ways that's syphilis informed UH Western culture
Speaker 1: during its UH four and a half centuries of unchecked life.
Speaker 1: But but hopefully we hit some of the high points.
Speaker 1: We hit some of the ideas who were play here
Speaker 1: about about us versus the other, about men and women,
Speaker 1: about the morality, about the cosmetics of dealing with syphilis,
Speaker 1: and if nothing else, that should serve as an interesting
Speaker 1: starting point for your own exploration of the topic. And
Speaker 1: also touching um the origin of it as well, and
Speaker 1: knowing that we don't have the end all be all
Speaker 1: theory in place yet, but we do have an idea
Speaker 1: of where it came from all right, Um, you guys
Speaker 1: can find us a multitude of places. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Go to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That
Speaker 1: is the mothership. You will find all the blog posts,
Speaker 1: the podcast, the videos, etcetera, including a number of different
Speaker 1: items related to this Symphilist series that we've put out
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it,
Speaker 1: How stuff works dot Com three year