Syphilis Through The Ages

The first episode, Syphilis the Great Imitator, dealt with the the organism that causes syphilista, which is known as Trepanema palladum, actually the subspecies of Trepema palladum, and this is all caused by this tiny, tightly coiled spiral key, this little bacterium that ends up causing all of this trouble for those that infected. So if you have not listened to

that first episode, go back, have a listen. We will walk you through all the stages of a syphilis infection from that from the tiny annoyances of the primary infection on up to the disastrously deforming and ultimately lethal stages of tertiary syphilis, as well as the treatment of it. Finally, um, all right, this has been mentioned in the other episode, but at bears mentioning again. The first recorded epidemic of narial syphilis occurred in Europe in by the close of

the fifteenth century. It was pretty rampant. In fact, in Naples, Italy, there was such a huge outbreak that the pope that said, hey, we need some help here. Soldiers were brought in, five thousand of them. And what do you think happened, Well, they got to the prostitutes and they got more syphilis, and then of course they just got worse and worse.

So what we're talking about is is a disease that ravished for centuries throughout Europe, and today we're going to try to get at the origins of it, and they we're gonna try to tease out some of the morality that has been paired with it, as well as the sort of xenophobia that surrounds it as well. Yeahs, as I mentioned before, it's it's it's kind of difficult to overstate the importance of syphilis in Western culture for those four and a half plus centuries. Um that it that

that it was a problem. Um And And as we discussed in the last episode, syphilis is not eradicated. It is still around the day. It's still something to be concerned about, and it's still something we have to to treat both wet with with penicillin and with education. But during the fourteenth century to the early twentieth century, it

was really permeating the fabric of culture. It was rampant. Yes, when we break down the percentages of it, it's going to vary depending on where in Europe you're looking, but you're generally looking at a ten to fifteen percent of

the population has syphilis. Uh, you know, with some degree uh you know, margin for error there, and then uh upwards of in military because then you have younger men who are initially traveling around and they are the ones that are spreading it from place to place, visiting prostitutes,

et cetera. Yeah, and because of its association with Columbus, who sailed under the Spanish flag, it was called the Spanish disease for a while, and then the French called it the Neopolitan or Italian disease because they caught it from residents of Naples, or should they say when Naples, of course, was one of the major outbreak areas. The Russians called it a Polish disease, the Polish called it a Russian disease, and the Turks called it a Christian disease,

while the English called it the French park. So what do you see here, a lot of finger pointing. Yes, it's always the other that you blame the disease, and you have to draw that firm line in your worldview between we the clean and they the disease, and hope that that line doesn't come to envelope you as well. Um, the the Columbus thing is so fascinating and it's and it's a it's a point that is continually studied and

argued about. But again we see that first big outbreak in and as we all know in four nine two Columbus sailed the ocean. So it sounds it sounds almost too good to be true, slash too horrible to be treat It almost sounds too easy, but but we keep coming back to it time and time again. Here we have Columbus sailing to this drastically new land and their contact, be it sexual or merely skin on skin, is occurring between members of his his crew and the native population.

And then they return to Europe, and then in their wake we see the emergence of this, this this powerful illness. Yeah, and you see a lot of wrongheaded ideas about this, this idea of xenophobia, right, this fear of strangers, this idea that there are savages that have uh spread this disease to Europeans via Columbus. Yeah, you laid with a member of another nation, you late with a member of

another another race. All these these weird taboos spring up, uh and seemingly in concert with the parameters of the illness. As we mentioned before, one of the reasons that syphilis is such a captivating topic is because it's so rife for metaphor, you know, be it a metaphor of morality, of a metaphor of racism, nationalism, sexism, whatever you want to throw at it. It seems to conform to that that form rather nicely. Yeah. Now we will get back to Columbus and we're going to try to get to

the origins of of syphilis. But before we do, it's just worth it to say that this is syphilis, and trying to get to the origins of it is really difficult. Um, it's very hard to study. There are many strains, some of which don't exist anymore, and then you have anecdotal claims throughout the centuries, so you can't really pair that with, you know, a systematic approach to say, yes, indeed, this was a case of syphilis, because again, as we have

mentioned before, syphilis is the great imitator. So it's very possible that someone had leprosy and not syphilis exactly. And and again on that difficult to study. Note, you you can't grow syphilis in a culture. You can't have a little petrie dish of syphilis. Even today, we have to study it in rabbits, so right, you have to have it in an actual organism to really get a good idea about it. That being said, there have been these

pre Columbian theories kicked around. In other words, this idea of hey, could syphilis have existed before the New World, previous to the late fourteen hundreds in the old world. That's again called the pre Columbian theory. Yeah, and this is this theory is basically that to say that, well, when we have other illnesses, and if you look back at some accounts of leprosy, you might say, well that that kind of leprosy doesn't match up as well with

our modern understanding of leprosy. Perhaps that was a different ailment, Perhaps that was in fact syphilis. And instead we're just kind of latching on to this easy explanation of Columbus. Since this groundbreaking um expedition takes place just a few years before this major outbreak. But of course, the world because I mean it makes sense, right, I mean, the world is more complicated than one ship sailing off and coming back. There are other movements going on in the world.

It's a time of great change. People are moving around, not only throughout Europe, but you have movements going into into into Asia and Africa. So what so why not? Why why could there not be another route for this illness to take? And we'll discuss that, we'll really try to get to the bottom of this. But so when we call when we say pre Columbian, we're talking about Old World. When we talk about Columbia and we're talking about New World generally here old world is Europe, Old

world is is Western civilization. New World the America's Columbia, etcetera. Right, And if you're going to talk about New World, you have to talk about something called yaws and facial Now, these are tropical diseases that are closely related to tromponema palladum, which is of course syphilis, although they are different. Bagel causes mouth stores and lumps in the bone, and yaws

caused skin stores and disfiguring growths on the legs. So of course they're they're related to syphilis, but they are non venereal, right, they're spread through skin to skin contact, They're not They're they're not straight up venereal diseases. Um. You know, granted you could catch them in skin to skin contact during sexual intercourse, but they're not depending on

that as their mode of transmission. Yeah, but these are all trimp and emial diseases that are These are all close relatives of the subspecies of Trimpandema palladum that causes syphilis. And we bring them up because they're important to study. If you're if you're trying to look at where syphilis, syphilis originated from, then you're gonna want to look at yaws and basil because paleo pathologists Bruce and Christine Rothschild used that information to point toward a new World origin

of syphilis. They examined six hundred and eighty seven skeletons from archaeological sites in the US. We're talking about arranging an age from four hundred to six thousand years and what they found is that populations to the south look to have syphilis, while those to the north had yaws. And then by contrast, they examined one thousand Old World skeletons dating to before contact with the New World and

they found zero cases of syphilis. So this kind of gets you onto the route of well, maybe the New World did have the case of syphilis, although it's not that clear cut, as well discussed, and this leads us to what is called the Unitarian hypothesis, which has nothing to do with Unitarians in the religious sense of the world, where don't worry, Unitarians, We're not We're not nailing this one on you. Unitarian in this sense that that it unites the Old World and New World hypotheses regarding the

emergence of syphilis in Europe. The basic idea here is that you do have Columbus and New sailors setting sail from Europe to the New World to the Americans, and when they're there, they do come into skin to skin contact sexual and non sexual with natives there, and then they end up acquiring trimpanemal diseases. Now, you know, again, think to the Jewel, think to to tent, to, think to yads, but not necessarily syphilis proper but they bring back a relative of syphilis, and they bring it back

to a drastically new incubation world. We're talking about a different environment because in the in the America's uh, you know, individuals with syphilis they're gonna largely be in you know, smaller communities. But then you bring them to a European port town. You bring it to a world where individuals are wearing more clothes, thus allowing for less skin on

skin contact. You're bringing it to a world where you have brothels, a world where you have tiny ships tightly packed with men sailing from one port to the next port throughout Europe. And what happens, according to this hypothesis is that the the treponemal disease changes and and we get this subspecies of Trumpanema palladum that causes syphilis as we know it. So it is a story of mutation

under new environmental circumstances. Yeah, if anyone is interested in taking a deeper dive into this and and some of the skeletal evidence behind this, there is a paper two thousand and twelve paper called the Science behind pre Columbian evidence of Syphilis and Europe research by documentary and that goes into this, uh much more. And I wanted to quote Molly Zuckerman. She's one of the authors of paper.

She says, in reality, it appears that venereal syphilis was the byproduct of two different populations meeting and exchanging a pathogen. It was an adaptive event, the natural selection of a disease, independent of morality or blame. Yeah, it's not as situation of ah, the sinful sailors are all those diseased natives in this new world. It's it's something more complicated than that. Yeah.

And you know, at the outset of this, the researchers for this paper, they really wanted to sort of disprove this idea that Columbus and his crew were vectors for syphilis because I thought, it can't be that just you know, Columbus and his his guys hung out in America and then brought it back to Europe and spread syphilis all over the place. Can't be that simple. And it's not that simple, um, you know, because the trick here is

that it mutated, it adapted rather um. But they really they went into it with the intent of saying, no, it can't be yeah, because it does sound like something you would read and sort of conspiracy theory kind of message board, right, like, well, these two dates line up, we can correlate this little little bit. Therefore, that must

be what happened. Um Now, Now, we do want to drive home that these are all hypotheses and that this is still an area that everyone that there are a lot of papers that come out about this, there's a lot of discussion, a lot of argument, lots did a lot of disagreement. So there's no definitive answer here, and it may indeed be one of those areas where we

never have a definitive answer. It's true. And uh, you know that the researchers who worked on that paper also worked on some of them worked on a different paper looking at fifty four published reports of pre Columbian evidence and skeletal remains of syphilis, and they found there that again there wasn't enough supporting information and real evidence to say that it existed in its form of syphilis as we know and talk about it now in the old world.

So again, there seems to be some sort of direction here in terms of the way that the river is streaming with information, But it doesn't mean that this is the endpoint of the origins of syphilis. And we're gonna talk about more of the sort of sights and sounds and smells of what it might be like in a syphilitic era in Europe. And I wanted to just read this. This is from the BBC, A Cultural History of Syphilis.

It says in the fourteen nineties and apparently new and terrifying disease struck naples in southern Italy and swept fire like across Europe, reaping a dreadful human cost. It must have been as though Hell had come to earth. Pustules spread across the gentitals and the face of its many sufferers. Unbearable gastro intestinal pain followed upon fevers, screamingly severe headaches

and other symptoms. Finally, flush fell from bones. Syphilis had arrived in Europe, where it would stay misunderstood, lacking any form of cure, for nearly five years. Yeah, that's that's pretty rough sounding. Um. And again, remember that this was not a disease that affected just the poor. This was a disease that affected rich and poor alike, that affected royalty and peasant, that affected clergy members, anyone that was engaging in sexual contact, uh, random risk, a high risk

of acquiring uh this this illness. And yeah, this was not a quiet sort of illness. I mean people could smell you before you even came around. And we're talking about rotting flesh. We are talking about your face bearing the marks of syphilis, your body bearing the marks of it. In fact, you could even kind of see it as

the sort of scarlet letter A brought into your flesh. Yeah. Again, the metaphorical power of syphilis is unavoidable here because you already have the idea, uh in Western culture, that that physical deformities may signal inner deformities, that that that that an inner sin can have a fleshly manifestation. And it's super easy to apply that line of thinking to syphilis,

because here's something that's spread through sex. Here is something that's spread through uh through sin, if you will, and and then has these these terrifying physical um manifestations, certainly in its later stages. So it's it's easy then for someone to point the figure and say this, this is the way. These are the wages of sin right here. All you have to do is look at this individual, Look at the look at the sores on their body. Look at the deformities of their facial feature. Look what

has happened to them? Uh, And and so you see this just throughout its stuff, throughout its four and a half centuries of unchecked rampaging, and even beyond into the twentieth century and even into the twenty one. There's there's a moral aspect to syphilis and to other venereal diseases. This is something you caught because you were doing something that was wrong. Like that's the script that is often applied to the scenario. Yeah, and now people have the

sort of calling card hallmarks of that disease. Right. They look at you and they say, oh, let me see you've you've got a nasty rash there, you've lost your hair, um, perhaps your nose is even caving in into what's called saddle nose. And so what do people do, Well, they try to find anything and everything that might cover up their transgressions or what would be perceived as transgression. Right.

And bear in mind again through all of this, that there are no set of standard symptoms for syphilis, and there are stages where it's undetectable. So so every everyone's going crazy with ways to detect and treat it, while the illness itself is is so difficult to get your hands on. It's the great imitator, it's the it's the great hider um. So yeah, bad stuff is happening to your body in the varying stages of syphilis. So one thing you might do is to, of course, you may

cover things up. Since we were wearing clothes, we're wearing makeup. You can apply clothing and makeup to cover up your source. Yeah. In fact, syphilis just creates this whole cottage industry of different things you can buy and do to either feel better or look better. So there might be some sort of snake oil that you can buy right that has

absolutely no medical marriage. Or you might visit your local wig maker quite a bit, because again, you want to cover up the bald patch on your head or the baldness so that people don't suspect that you have syphilis. And if you are a prostitute, American is a must because yeah, you might be saving your pupd care any way to cut down on lights, but then you also

might have an outbreak of syphilis down there. You want to disguise the signs, so you get a wig for your genitals also called a mercan, which is not a Muppet character. Yeah. They apparently used a lot now in for films, especially historical films. Yeah, but historically it was more a matter of venereal diseases for the men. Generally, wasn't really an option because the well there's just more to cover up down there, and uh, just do a Google im his search, he'll see what I'm talking about.

All right, Yeah, there are some rely just sticks there that you can't quite uh cover with American. But what happens when your nose caves in and your flesh begins to rot away, Well, this creates a problem, and in general it was kind of a rough time for noses anyway. If you remember the story of Tico Briy, the the astronomer, I think we did an episode on him, or at least he's come he comes up a time we did. Yeah, Yeah,

fascinating individual. Um. There may be some biographers that that creep syphilis in there, but but I think it's pretty established that that he lost the nose in a duel. So on on one level, you can lose that nose in a duel. Living an adventurous lifestyle, getting yourselves into arguments with other armed gentleman. But you can also acquire sephilis through your adventurous lifestyle. And then you see the

saddle nose, the eventual rotting away of the nose. So one thing you can do is you can buy a fake nose to where over your destroyed nose. And this is this is as simple as it sounds. If you've ever seen a digital underground video and you've seen Humpty Hump with the big fake nose on his the on a face who incidentally, according to the backstory, lost it in a frying accident, I believe so, So no dueling

or syphilis involved with Humpty. But but it's basically the same scenario, a fake nose that is strapped onto the body or held with wires over the over the the the vacant area. Yeah, in fact, and this is according to Lindsay fitz Harris, who is in medical historian and writes on the Kirojian Apprentice, which is a great website

documenting medical surgeries. She writes that this deformity was so common amongst these suffering from the pots, as it was sometimes called, that no nose clubs sprung up in London on February eighteen seventy for The Star reported Miss Sanborn tells us and an eccentric gentleman, having taken taken a fancy to see a large party of noseless persons, invited everyone thus afflicted whom he met in the street to dine on a certain day at a tavern where he

formed them into a brotherhood. And on this site again that Lindsay fitz Harris is put together, there is a great example of one of these sort of noses that's attached to a pair of glasses, that's attached to a sort of almost looks like a headgear, like early headgear braces, and it's one that that a female patient war Yeah, and you can imagine that warn with a wig, and

it makes it makes perfect sense. And you know, the no Nose Club also makes a lot of sense because if you're you're dealing with this illness, you're having to cover yourself up and where this this this fake nose over your your your face. I mean, there's gonna come a time when you want to be able to just take that off and be yourself, no matter what has happened to yourself in this illness. You want to be

able to just say, hey, here we are. We may not have noses anymore because of this illness, but hey, we're people, and we want to look at each other like we're people and not worry about oh whatsever and all these other people that don't have syphilis, or don't realize they have syphilis, or in other stages of the illness are looking at me and judging me for for what I am and making judgments about my moral character

based on what has happened. Well, and fitz Harris has that blog post Still Syphilis a Love Story which essentially talks about this, and I believe it is miss Sanborn who eventually takes the fake nose off at her husband's request because he accepts her as she is. You know, it's interest. I was listening to that to BBC program, The Cultural History of Syphilis, which I'll link to on

the landing page for this podcast episode. But they go into some of the cases of individuals, particularly in the seventeenth century, who end up, if not finding pride in their syphilitic appearance, they at least, you know, come to own it. Uh. You see individuals like Sir William Davenant uh sixteen of six through sixteen sixty eight as a poet, playwright, and he was famously not shy about being painted or

depicted in artwork without a false nose. So you see a very sunken saddle nose, you know, almost a vacant um you know, part of his facial features. And he was, you know, pretty upfront about it. Um. Another instance, you have artist Gerard Delorice one through seventeen eleven, who is actually a prominent painter uh and uh and he was

born with congenital syphilis. Um. And he he was. There's actually a painting of him by Rembrandt, which I'll put on the blog for everyone to see because it's it's a it's a Rembrandt piece, so it's it's splendid to behold. But here's an individual who you know, he's setting for a portrait. He's he's he's open and uh and free about who he you know, he's not trying to hide it at this point. And you see a number of individuals, say John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, who was

portrayed by Johnny Depp in the movie Libertine. Um. You see individuals like this who basically say, yeah, I have syphilis. I have had a wildlife, and the wages of having that wildlife are syphilis. So it's it's almost like a

badge of honor. Yeah, It's like when you hear I've heard people say point at rock stars aging rock stars, and you know, say, oh, they look rough, but they partied hard to get there, you know, to say that, you know, what has happened to them is like a badge of honor because it says they have enjoyed their younger life and that is why, uh, their their older form is so decrepit. And think that's what you're seeing

in some of these individuals. Now, granted, these are individuals that we're living at the in the upper echelon of society, so they had a little more room too, you know, to grab onto that pride. They weren't dying of syphilis, uh, you know in the slum. Uh. And likewise, some of these individuals too also had taken to various um ideas

about how syphilis could be treated. So they thought that perhaps their their syphilis was being treated and managed by regular mercury treatments in one of those mercury steam baths, which, as we mentioned in the previous episode, may uh, you know, was was likely making their symptoms worse in some cases. So they thought that they were above sort of some of the social rules in place because of their position and society and be that they might have been vanquishing it.

So they were uh, not quite as concerned about how they looked. Perhaps, Yeah, and if you're taking if you're looking at the body from a less religious standpoint, you're looking at more from a hedonistic or even mechanical standpoint, then you're saying, hey, I live in a world in which syphilis exists, and if I behave a certain way,

syphilis is what happens to my body. You know. Um, some of these cases too, you see individuals where they they're they're almost happy when they finally catch syphilis because it means, if nothing else, it means they don't have to worry about catching syphilis anymore. You know, they're they're they're no longer living in the shadow of syphilis, but within the dark of syphilis. And you can see where

there might be a certain amount of empowerment there. Certainly, if you have to latch onto something, you might as well latch onto that, although again you'd have to be in a really specific social position to do that, and

you'd have to be a male for certain. No. Yes, indeed, now, if you had the money, the wherewithal, and you did not want to wear a fake nose, or you weren't ready to come out to the world that you had syphilis, then you would try a kind of nasal reconstruction, which in the sixteenth century was called the Indian method, and this involved cutting a nose sized section of skin from

the forehead. So there's again another calling card or hallmark that you have the disease, because your nose looks great, but you've got a big patch of skin, but you have a really big wig. That's true, that's true, you have a nice wig. But they take that skin from the forehead and they would attach it to the bridge of the nose to maintain a steady blood supply. And then that flap was twisted into place and sewn over the damaged area, which kind of created a replacement nose.

But again it wasn't perfect and you know, really cold weather, it would not turn the same color as the rest of your nose. So there were certain telltale signs that it may look like an intech nose, but it is not your perhaps knows that you were born with. But it turns out that there's a better and perhaps more horrific way to take a stab at plastic surgery or

early plastic surgery. You know what it is tempting to say it's horrific, but it but in you know, another way, it's kind of beautiful and it gets it how malleable our flesh really is. Because again modern plastic surgery, the plastic is referring to the plasticity of the flesh, that you can craft flesh into a form. Yeah. And actually this method did and does inform plastic surgeons about how skin grows and how you can mold it and and sculpt it. So yeah, in this we see the sixteenth

century advent of the Italian method. Now to to picture this, um, if you don't have an image of it in front of you, um, And and if you're not driving a car doing anything where you need your hands place, place your your palm of your hand, uh, kind of on your forehead, okay, and then allow your nose to to touch your arm. That is basically the position where the surgeon would would lock your arm into place. There would be like a head vice type of scenario going on,

so that you could not move your arm away. You cannot move your the flesh of your arm away from the flesh of your face. And then that's where you perform the the the skin graft. You walk a pedicle of flesh, you sort of cut it away from the forearm, and you stitch it into place where the nose should be in play of the nose that you've lost two syphilis or duels or what have you, and then that's held in place while the the grafted skin grows onto

the face. So for a brief period of time, you have effectively sown your arm, or a surgeon has effectively sown your arm to your face. And then once the graft is taken, then you cut the arm away from it and you've you've essentially walked as a piece of flesh off of your arm onto your face and then use that to form a new nose, which is kind of brilliant, and honestly, you ask a plastic surgeon about this and they'll be like, this is a great way to try to get the skin to graft onto other

skin and then be able to shape it um. The only problem here is that for about two weeks, you're walking around with your your hand stuff in your head and you can't really move your nose right because that's now stuck to you your arm. Yeah, I'm guessing you're probably not doing a whole lot of walk around town like that. But but yeah, there's going to be a weird period there. But you know, the Italian method, it's

a remarkable what it can do. Like it may be summoning images of like a really bad plastic surgery job or something. But I've I've seen some images, particularly like particularly late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds, in which you see multiple pedicles of flesh that are essentially walked up the body to the face to repair individuals who say

lost their lower jaw uh to to gunshot wound. Uh. And then you're able to walk all these pedicles up to the face and it looks kind of ghastly at first, but then you start putting them in their place, and at the end of the of this series of procedures, you have a much more uh normal looking visage uh there in place of the damaged tissue. So in in in this scenario, we see the impact of syphilis on

early rhino pass plastic in Europe. But we also see other ways in which syphilis ends up change in the way that that that medicine is practiced, uh through throughout the the old world. For instance, immediately it challenged humorism and the doctrine of contagion that was probablement the other day. Um. We also see syphilis as a catalyst for modern doctor patient confidentiality, because suddenly it becomes a kind of a calling card for some doctors. Hey, let me treat you

for your syphilist because I'll keep it on the download. Now, we just kind of take that for granted that we go into a doctor, they're not going to laugh about syphilis to everyone in the neighborhood. And then this is another key fact that was brought up in the book Cleaned by Virginia Smith that I've referenced before in podcasts, and that is that previously you had you'd go into your your local barber shop and you'd have the barber

tonsors in the front, barber surgeons in the back. You can have your haircut, your face shaved, all of that that take place in the front of the building and go into the back, into the yard or what have you. That's where you would receive minor surgeries. That's where you would uh take a bath and saying later as the as syphilis begins to spread, that's where you start getting treated for civilis that's where you might take your mercury bath. And so the prevalence of the disease and fear regarding

the disease, this really leads to regulation. This really this leads to of course, you know, paranoia. And so you see the two separates. So you see the separation of the barber tonsor and the barber surgeon. That's right, because that red and white striped barber pole used to indicate that there are surgeries down there. Right in case anybody's ever wondered why, Um, that poll is outside of a

hair cuttery, all right. So that's this impact on on on medicine and medical surgeries um, as well as cottage industries like wig makers, right, and people who are are selling you know, snake oils. But there are certain things that you cannot cover up here when it comes to syphilis. And one of the things would be your teeth. Now you can pull all your teeth, you could put dentures in, but if you didn't want to do that you're kind

of saddled with the ravages of your teeth bicyphilis. Yeah, And one of the more one of the more particular things we see here with the teeth is something that pops up in cases of congenital syphilis, and that's something known as Hutchinson teeth. These are, you know, as with all things syphilis, the exact symptoms vary, but this is often typified by sharpened looking teeth or peg shaped teeth

that kind of have sharpened points on the edges. Um. You can look for for images this online, I think, and actually I did a blog post um that I'll link to on the landing page for this podcast episode that includes, uh, the image that Julian and I are both looking at now. But they do have a kind of monstrous appearance either like sharpened teeth inside of a

human mouth, particularly canine teeth. Yes, And so we start to look at this for a little bit, and uh, naturally your mind would turn to vampire teeth, because that's kind of what this looks like. It looks like a sort of non speraw version of vampire teeth. Yeah, And it's led us some commentators to argue that the the evolution of the vampire myth in in Western civilization may

have connections to cases of congenital or hereditary syphilis. The children are born like this, they have this kind they could have in addition to these teeth, they may also have elongated fingers, They may have elongated skull. There various other deformities that might be interpreted as monstrous by by somebody taking in the scenario UM and another connection between vampires and syphilis arguably takes us to bron Stoker himself,

the author of the book Dracula. And another area where vampires and syphilis seem to converge UH is in the

case of the eighteen novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Now bron Stoker's exact cause of death and he died in nineteen twelve A means you know somewhat something of the mystery, but some biographers attribute his death to tertiary syphilis and make the further argument that Dracula itself, as a literary work is is kind of reflecting not only the paranoia regarding syphilis that's present in the culture, but also Stoker's own uh experience with the illness itself. Because you look

at vampires. You look attractively and you see uh, something that is at once sexual and monstrous. You see this this uh, this outsider that has come to in this case to England and is spreading this uh, this illness of vamporism. This uh, this this alien pathogen to to to to two women in the in the in the area. Yes, they are puncturing the women. Right, So again you have

to use that metaphor which always comes up sex and vampires, right. Um. The in fact, there is you something this link uh to a class that's offered, the classes the vampire in Literature and Cinema, taught by Tomaslavljovich, who is a professor of Slavic and comparative literature, and he uses that vampire lore to explore folklore explanations of disease epidemics, which makes sense, right,

especially if you're you're caught up in this. You'll say, it's the sixteenth century, is the seventeenth century, and this is this you know, pervasive disease, and you have all of these sort of myths surrounding it. It's possible that that people could sort of extrapolate like maybe there are vampires. Maybe this is how it's being spread. Yeah, because again four and a half centuries in which we could not

cure it. So you're throwing what you can at. You're throwing you're throwing actual research, You're throwing snake oil, you're throwing mercury, steam baths, you're throwing religion. And again, you know, because again it just can't be It can't be overstated. The the connection between between morality and and stuff lists here and at least in the way that people try to understand it, or at least ended up viewing it

in society. And so yeah, you're throw in a little myth in there, you throw a little magical thinking and and and there you go. You can easily see the vampire emerge. Nothing concrete there, but some food for thought. Yeah, which maybe why a vampire in the form of Count spiro Keet shows up in a Navy video in the seventies talking about STDs. Right, Yes, and you can watch this. I link to the video on a blood post I did for stuff to blow your mind. It's actually a

fabulous documentary. It's kind of the style of of Schoolhouse Rocks and uh, and it has a Scooby Doo element to it as well, yeah, it's it's very silly. Look, even when they get into some of the rougher stuff, such as congenital syphilis or or actually showing illustrations of genitals,

it's like the setup is very cartoon. It's Death him self is having an award ceremony handing out the coveted fourth Horseman Award for a disease that's that's done the best work in causing misery and death around the world, and who should win it but count sparrow Keet who represents syphilis. Uh, the the embodiment of ganahea takes some issue with it. Some of the other illnesses are like,

what's so great about sparrow keyt what's he doing? There's a cure for it, blah blah blah, and so Death and spirow Key, mainly Death goes on to explain to us why how selphilis works and why it is a problem, and why enlisted navy men, why why sailors should be on guard and should go seek treatment for any time they have any kind of a flare out, which kind of gets into this whole rich tradition of the military trying to bring a level of awareness of STDs to

UH to everyone. In fact, if you go back to War one in wor World two, UH, you will see all sorts of pamphlets and posters warning military members to be very careful to watch out for siff, watch out for gnahea. And it even reminded me of our Quarantine episode in which we talked about the U. S. Military quarantining prostitutes in an attempt to try to separate what

they thought is disease carrying prostitutes with STDs from military members. Yeah, so you have you have these campaigns that are basically in essence saying, hey, sailors, when you go into the next port town, please stay away from the prostitutes because you could catch syphilis and it's bad news. And you have to bear in mind too that even after the advent of penicillin, you'll have situations, particularly in wartime, where there's there's not an unlimited amount of penicillan to throw

at at your your navy men's venereal diseases. You have, you have that a lot of that penicillan is earmarked for the battlefield for for use in helping with soldiers who have been injured in combat. You don't want to spend it all just on a bunch of horny sailors who can't control themselves when they go into a farm port of call. So they're throwing education at the problem as well. But they're speaking to a male audience, and and so the messaging tends to take on a very

sexist feel. Yeah. In fact, one of the posters which I'm looking at right now is a really good example. It's this, Um it's a photograph of a girl that looks, you know, kind of innocent and pure and you know, very Norman Rockwell, Like this is the Norman Rockwell gal. I'm looking at very Norman Rockwell. In fact, she has this sort of beatific smile on as if you know, she's doing godly work. And then there are you know, some servicemen who are looking at her at a distance.

And across this poster it says she may look clean, but and the butt isn't all red in all caps, and it says pick ups good time girls. Prostitutes spread syphilis and gonorrhea. You can't beat the axis if you get v D. And what I think is so interesting about this is that there are many other posters that have more I don't know, what are you say, tawdry looking women that there are basically saying they're prostitutes. But then you have this other sort of like I said,

be to fix smiled, innocent looking girl. And the point is, as you say, is that they're speaking to men, and um, they're really underscoring this idea that STDs venarrow diseases all begin with women and that they are the font of evil. Yeah. I mean there's this darkness in the woman. It's almost like the like the feminine form as monster is the message here? And and you see again you do see

some more fantastic, horrific visions of this. There's one where the woman is like moving a handheld mask away from her face and behind it there's a death skull. Um. I Salvador Dolly's illustration that he did for an anti sephilis poster in which you see the two buxom women. Yeah, I guess it kind of melting kind of, but they look like a death skull. You know. It's one of those one of his classic stout images where you see the death's head uh in the form of the women.

I'll be sure to throw that un stuff to your mind dot com as well. So everyone can see it. And yeah, weren't you telling me about the sixteenth century hypothesis of the woman as really the germanator of syphilis. Yeah, yeah, there was this notion that the syphilis emerged because you had you had women, you had prostitutes who were having sex with multiple men. Uh, and then those semens with those different seeds would be inside her and they would

mingle together and corrupt into the form of syphilis. So with and you know, they had no one there was no proof to back up this ridiculous theory, but it did place the blame firmly on on women and very moralistically as well. These women are are sinning, and therefore you have sickness arising from them. They are the sore of of the ailment itself. Yeah, and uh, not not to get too crazy here, but it just kind of

brings me back this idea of witches. And we talked about which is and we talked about, you know, the power of women and sexuality. And again here we are subscribing the sort of power this death to women in the form of syphilis. And uh, you know, I don't know that that's what all the poster artists intended, but it certainly captured the spirit of the times. Yeah, and then again they were talking to a predominantly male audience.

As we mentioned before, even in UH, you know, over the centuries that syphilis was really ravaging Europe, you saw the highest percentages of infection uh in the in the in the soldiers are certainly a higher percentage than in the rest of the population. So soldiers and prostitutes were a key area of transference. Indeed. All right, so there

you have it again. There's just there's not enough time and even in a series of podcasts to really get into all the way it's syphilis informed UH Western culture during its UH four and a half centuries of unchecked life. But but hopefully we hit some of the high points. We hit some of the ideas who were play here about about us versus the other, about men and women, about the morality, about the cosmetics of dealing with syphilis, and if nothing else, that you serve as an interesting

starting point for your own exploration of the topic. And also touching um the origin of it as well, and knowing that we don't have the end all be all theory in place yet, but we do have an idea of where it came from all right, Um, you guys can find us at a multitude of places. Yeah, that's right. Go to step to Blow your Mind dot com. That

is the mothership. You will find all the blog posts, the podcast, the videos, et cetera, including a number of different items related to this syphilis series that we've put out. And you can also find us at Mind Stuff Show on YouTube. And if you've got some ideas percolating there about the top think we covered today or any sort of stories you want to share with us, you can do so below the mind at Discovery dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it How staff works dot com