The Wassermann test was "invented" for serologic diagnosis, and Paul Ehrlich proved that salvarsan, or 606, was effective for the treatment of syphilis. This success was preceded by 300 failures with related arsenical compounds. The scientific, medical, social, ethical, and economic issues of that day have recurred again with the AIDS epidemic.
Full Answer
How long does it take to treat and cure syphilis?
The treatment of syphilis in Ferrara (Italy) in the 19th century: the example of the Ferrarese pharmacopoeia. Guidi E (1), Angelini L, Mares D, Contini C, Vicentini CB. Author information: (1)Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Section of Occupational Medicine and Hygiene, University of Ferrara. The authors have taken the Italian city of Ferrara as an example …
Will syphilis ever go away?
The Wassermann test was "invented" for serologic diagnosis, and Paul Ehrlich proved that salvarsan, or 606, was effective for the treatment of syphilis. This success was preceded by 300 failures with related arsenical compounds. The scientific, medical, social, ethical, and economic issues of that day have recurred again with the AIDS epidemic.
How to cure syphilis naturally?
Effective treatment for syphilis was controversial because of the perception that a widely available cure would increase “immoral” behavior. Until the early 20th century, the primary treatment for syphilis was mercury , in the form of calomel, ointments, steam baths, pills, and other concoctions.
What antibiotic cures syphilis?
Mar 20, 2020 · Mercury stayed in favour as treatment for syphilis until 1910 when Ehrlich discovered the anti-syphilitic effects of arsenic and developed Salvarsan, popularly called the “magic bullet”. [11, 12] New Discoveries of the Syphilis Organism and Its Treatment
How was syphilis treated in the 19th century?
An antimicrobial used for treating disease was the organo-arsenical drug Salvarsan, developed in 1908 by Sahachiro Hata in the laboratory of Nobel prize winner Paul Ehrlich.
What was the old treatment for syphilis?
Mercury was in use by the early 16th century, and remained the primary treatment for syphilis until the early 20th century.
What did they used to treat syphilis with?
Medication. When diagnosed and treated in its early stages, syphilis is easy to cure. The preferred treatment at all stages is penicillin, an antibiotic medication that can kill the organism that causes syphilis.Sep 25, 2021
How did they treat STDS in the 1800s?
In the 18th and 19th centuries, mercury, arsenic and sulphur were commonly used to treat venereal disease, which often resulted in serious side effects and many people died of mercury poisoning. The first known effective treatment for syphilis called salvarsan or arsphenamine was introduced in 1910.Feb 27, 2019
What animal did syphilis come from?
Syphilis also came to humans from cattle or sheep many centuries ago, possibly sexually”. The most recent and deadliest STI to have crossed the barrier separating humans and animals has been HIV, which humans got from the simian version of the virus in chimpanzees.Jan 13, 2015
Did Lucrezia Borgia have syphilis?
Syphilis affected many illustrious personages in the 15th and 16th centu- ry, such as the Kings of France, Charles VIII and Francis I; the popes Alexander VI, Julius II and Leo X; Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, Erasmus of Rotterdam and Benvenutto Cellini, who, among oth- ers, survived syphilis without consequences1.
Which disease did this magic bullet treat?
The first magic bullet was fired at syphilis on this day in 1909. Although specific diseases responded better to some drugs than to others, before the early 1900s development of Salvarsan, an arsenic-based drug to treat syphilis, drugs weren't developed to target a specific disease.Aug 31, 2017
Where did syphilis come from originally?
Around 3000 BC the sexually transmitted syphilis emerged from endemic syphilis in South-Western Asia, due to lower temperatures of the post-glacial era and spread to Europe and the rest of the world.Mar 25, 2014
When was a cure for syphilis found?
In 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered the mould Penicillum notatum,1 setting the stage for the development of an entirely new syphilis cure.
Was Mercury effective in treating syphilis?
Prior to the first use of penicillin against syphilis in 1943, mercury had a prominent position in the medical practice despite a tremendous toxicity and a questionable efficiency. In fact, during 450 years mercury remained the guarantee of efficacy.
How long does it take to cure syphilis after penicillin shot?
More serious cases that affect the brain are usually treated with daily penicillin injections given into your buttocks or a vein for 2 weeks, or a 28 day course of antibiotic tablets if you can't have penicillin. Follow-up blood tests will be recommended once treatment finishes to check that it has worked.
How common was syphilis in the 18th century?
The study estimates that in the mid-1770s, approximately 8% of residents of both sexes had been infected with syphilis before the age of 35. The estimated infection rate among under-35s in rural communities within a 10 mile radius of the city, however, was a little under 1%.Sep 14, 2017
What was the first disease to be discovered after the invention of printing?
These are referred to as the "Columbian" and "pre-Columbian" hypotheses. Syphilis is the first "new" disease to be discovered after the invention of printing. News of it spread quickly and widely, and documentation is abundant. For the time, it was "front page news" that was widely known among the literate.
What is the name of the hypothesis that syphilis was carried to Europe from the Americas?
These are referred to as the "Columbian" and "pre-Columbian" hypotheses .
Why is there a need for adherence to standard practice in scientific publication?
As in all scientific fields , in order to resolve the controversy over the origin and antiquity of syphilis in the Old World , there is a strong need for adherence to standard practice in scientific publication and the increased publication of relevant evidence in peer-reviewed journals.".
How many skeletal remains are there in the Dominican Republic?
Exactly 538 skeletal remains in the Dominican Republic have shown evidence characteristic of treponemal disease in 6–14% of the afflicted population, which Rothschild and colleagues have postulated was syphilis. The Aztec god Nanahuatzin is often interpreted as suffering from syphilis.
Which scientist suggested that the bacterium that causes syphilis belongs to the same phylogenetic
Combination theory. Historian Alfred Crosby suggested in 2003 that both theories are partly correct in a "combination theory". Crosby says that the bacterium that causes syphilis belongs to the same phylogenetic family as the bacteria that cause yaws and several other diseases.
Where did syphilis come from?
He also postulated that the disease was previously unknown, and came from the island of Hispaniola (modern Dominican Republic and Haiti ).
When was the first syphilis outbreak?
Here, the disease is believed to have astrological causes. The first well-recorded European outbreak of what is now known as syphilis occurred in 1495 among French troops besieging Naples, Italy.
What was the cause of syphilis in the 20th century?
At the beginning of the 20th century, despite 20 years of intensive bacteriologic research, the cause of syphilis was unknown; no diagnostic test and no treatment had been found. Syphilis was one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality, and those who had the disease were burdened with a social stigma.
When was syphilis discovered?
It was considered a disease of "bad blood.". But success was soon to follow. In only 10 years, from 1900 to 1910, the Treponema pallidum was discovered as the cause of syphilis. Animal models were developed for research.
When was the first syphilis spirochete discovered?
The syphilis spirochete organism, a bacterium, was discovered in 1905. In 1908, Sahachiro Hata, working in Paul Ehrlich’s laboratory, discovered the arsenic compound arsphenamine that became known after 1910 by its brand name, Salvarsan. It was also known as “606” because it was the 606th compound Hata and Ehrlich tested. Salvarsan was the first effective specific chemotherapy against syphilis, although it could involve an extended series of treatments and cause serious side effects.
Where did syphilis originate?
Syphilis is generally believed to have come originally from the New World, imported into Europe by Christopher Columbus’s sailors after their famous voyage of 1492. Two important early experiences with syphilis are recorded in Grunpeck’s ca. 1496 Tractatus de pestilentiali scorra sive male de Franzos (also available in the vernacular German, and Ulrich von Hutten’s ca. 1519, Of the vvood called guaiacum, that healeth the Frenche pockes. Fracastoro is credited with naming the disease in his 1530 poem, “Syphilis.”
What was the first treatment for syphilis?
Guaiacum, a New World tree, was the source of another early treatment for syphilis used in the 16th century. Numerous patent medicines were also developed, especially in the 19th century, often with euphemistic names and advertising.
How did the Wasserman test affect the diagnosis of syphilis?
Though it could produce false positives and though performing the test required great skill on the part of the laboratory technician, the Wasserman test affected both the social and the medical understanding of syphilis, because it could reveal the disease at the asymptomatic stage. This meant that a syphilitic might be a person with no current outward manifestation of disease who could have or spread syphilis without realizing it.
What is the most common name for syphilis?
Until the 19th century, syphilis was known by many different names, but the most common was the “French Disease.” (The French called it the “Neopolitan disease,” in a pattern that would repeat itself elsewhere. Russians, for instance, sometimes called it the “Polish disease.”)
When was syphilis first reported?
Syphilis, 1494-1923. Syphilis was first reported in Europe in 1494 among soldiers (and their camp followers) involved in a war between France and Naples. The disease was striking in two ways: for its unpleasantness and for its status as a new disease, unknown to the ancient medical authorities. Syphilis would remain a significant social ...
What year was the Contagious Diseases Act passed?
New York: 1917–1922. Association for Promoting the Extension of the Contagious Diseases Act, 1866, to the Civil Population of the United Kingdom. Report on the Extent of Venereal Disease, on the Operation of the Contagious Diseases Act, and the Means of Checking Contagion: With Appendix.
How did gonorrhoea affect the military?
The impact of gonorrhoea and syphilis on military personnel in terms of morbidity and mortality was greatly mitigated after 1943 due to the introduction of penicillin, as well as other factors such as education, prophylaxis, training of health personnel and adequate and rapid access to treatment.
What is Guaiacum used for?
In his 1530 poem Syphilis, sive morbus gallicus, Fracastoro described the use of guaiacum : ” .. in external use for dressing ulcers, abscesses and pustules. For internal use drink the first potion by the beaker twice a day: in the morning at sunrise and by the light of the evening star.
Where did the name Syphilis come from?
The name for the disease, ‘syphilis’, originates from an epic Latin poem Syphilis, sive morbus gallicus , ‘Syphilis, or the French disease’, published in 1530 by Girolamo Fracastoro (L. Hieronymus Fracastorius). Fracastoro was a poet, mathematician and physician from Verona in the Republic of Venice, who in his work De contagione et contagiosis morbis first described typhus and wrote on contagion, contagious particles that could multiply in the human body and be passed from person to person or through the mediation of fomes, and which were the cause of many epidemic diseases. [4, 11, 12]
Why was syphilis so feared?
From its beginning, syphilis was greatly feared by society – because of the repulsiveness of its symptoms, the pain and disfigurement that was endured, the severe after effects of the mercury treatment, but most of all, because it was transmitted and spread by an inescapable facet of human behaviour, sexual intercourse.
What was the first treatment for syphilis?
The Early Treatments of Syphilis. In the early 16th century, the main treatments for syphilis were guaiacum, or holy wood , and mercury skin inunctions or ointments, and treatment was by and large the province of barber and wound surgeons.
When was syphilis first discovered?
Up until the early 20th century it was believed that syphilis had been brought from America and the New World to the Old World by Christopher Columbus in 1493. In 1934 a new hypothesis was put forward, that syphilis had previously existed in the Old World before Columbus.
Who wrote the poem Syphilis?
In 1530, Girolamo Fracastoro in his poem Syphilis sive morbus gallicus described in detail the symptoms of syphilis and its treatment with guaiacum, the holy wood , a herb made from the bark of trees from the guaiacum family which was brought back from the Caribbean and South America in the New World, and the treatment with mercury.
Why was mercury used in syphilis?
Mercury was the remedy of choice for syphilis in Protestant Europe. Paracelsus (1493-1541) formulated mercury as an ointment because he recognised the toxicity and risk of poisoning when administrating mercury as an elixir. Mercury was already being used in Western Europe to treat skin diseases.
What is the black spot on the neck of the Quack Doctor?
Viscount Squanderfield, who is seated and holding up a pill box to the quack doctor, is depicted with a large black spot on his neck. This spot is often interpreted as a syphilis sore and the pills are likely to be mercury pills.
What is the purpose of mercury pills?
Mercury pills were popular for treating syphilis from the 17th to 19th century. Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum and has four stages. Three of the four has manifestations on the skin of the sufferer.
What is the Hogarth print?
The Hogarth print depicts a shelf of apothecary ceramic jars — one or two may contain mercury ointment. The RPS museum has a tin-glazed earthenware jar with a label which reads ’Elecampane and mercury ointment’ dating from around 1700–30 and would have been available from apothecaries during Hogarth’s time.
Why does the mistress hold another pill box?
His child mistress holds another pill box whilst dabbing the edge of her mouth, which may indicate she could be suffering from excessive salivation as a result of mercury poisoning or she could be dabbing an oozing sore. Source: Museum of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
What was the first antibiotic for syphilis?
Source: Museum of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. Salvarsan was the first effective treatment for syphilis.
When was the first syphilis treatment discovered?
The first effective treatment for syphilis, Salvarsan, was only found in 1910 — five years after the causative bacterium was identified by Fritz Schaudinn (a zoologist) and Erich Hoffmann (a dermatologist). Salvarsan was developed by Nobel Prize winner Paul Ehrlich and his Japanese assistant Sahachiro Hata.
What was the British medical system preoccupied with at mid-century?
British medical authorities were preoccupied at mid-century with the idea that prostitutes were the primary carriers of infection. By the 1890s, however, public censure was shifting to the intemperate, affluent men who exploited working-class women and infected their own families.
What were the effects of the VD clinics in the 1920s?
With a mandate to provide free, universal care, the VD clinics of the 1920s and 1930s helped to break down the economic power imbalances that had shaped Victorian doctor–patient relationships. These changes were also the product of new debates over culpability and infection control.
What was the subject of the short story Third Generation?
Nineteenth-century doctors took seriously the notion that a diagnosis of syphilis could trigger acute despair and melancholia. Indeed, this was the subject of Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story Third Generation, which follows an aristocratic young man diagnosed with syphilis.
What did Gertrude have to settle for?
Able to demonstrate only cruelty through the wilful communication of syphilis, Gertrude had to settle for a judicial separation. Women in Gertrude’s predicament contended with husbands who were protected by the medical and legal establishment.
Why was the Campbell case a cause célèbre?
The case became a cause célèbre as curious readers pored over salacious newspaper reports of the Campbell’s dysfunctional marriage. With the establishment of the divorce courts in 1858 women like Gertrude could theoretically extricate themselves from abusive marriages.
Does antenatal screening catch syphilis?
Today, routine antenatal screening in Britain catches most cases of syphilis among pregnant women. But in the 19th century, infection among wives and children was common across all social classes. Skeleton of an 11-year-old child born with syphilis, on display at London’s Wellcome Collection.
Can syphilis cause miscarriages?
Ernest risks infecting her and any children they might have together. As well as causing infertility, syphilis can induce miscarriages and stillbirths. Some children born to syphilitic mothers will never show any signs of infection. Others die in infancy or develop serious health complications.
When did syphilis appear in Italy?
Syphilis appeared in Italy in 1498 just after Columbus had returned from the New World. This later led to suggestions that it had been brought back from the New World, in exchange for the many European illnesses that decimated the populations of North American Indians.
What happened to syphilis in Europe?
Exposed to a virgin population new infections can be particularly virulent and during the subsequent century in Europe syphilis led to severe physical complications and often death.
What is a tertiary syphilis?
This was also called tertiary syphilis or dementia paralytica, a distinctive and horrifying madness. Patients cycled through profound depression to extreme elation, psychosis and later dementia before dying.
Why were prostitutes forcibly treated with mercury?
Except that is for the prostitutes who in a number of cities like Vienna were forcibly treated with mercury in order to reduce transmission. Against the link to Mercury is the fact that when malarial fever therapy was introduced in 1917, it cured GPI.
Where does syphilis start?
Syphilis begins with a sore on the penis. For the first most virulent century these sores often extended all over the body – a mark of Cain. But later as the virulence declined they might only appear on the genitals and internal organs. One of the early discoveries was that a mercury salve could help.
Who coined the term dementia praecox?
Here’s the case against mercury. Many years later in 1925 shortly before he died Emil Kraepelin who coined the term dementia praecox for schizophrenia took a trip to North America to raise funds for his Institute in Munich. One of his interests on this trip was to look at mental illnesses among North American Indians. He was struck by the lack of GPI – even though syphilis had supposedly come from North America.
Does mercury cure syphilis?
This led to a linkage between mercury and syphilis and the famous phrase of “a night with Venus and a lifetime with Mercury”. Mercury helped but it didn’t cure. Physicians began to work on methods to get mercury into the body.
Quotes
- If I were asked which is the most destructive of all diseases I should unhesitatingly reply, it is that which for some years has been raging with impunity What contagion does thus invade the whole body, so much resist medical art, becomes inoculated so readily, and so cruelly tortures the pati…
Military
- Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) have posed a threat to military service members throughout history. [2, 3] In the US Army during World War I they were the second most common reason for disability and absence from duty, being responsible for nearly 7 million lost person-days and the discharge of more than 10,000 men. Only the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 account…
Origin
- Up until the early 20th century it was believed that syphilis had been brought from America and the New World to the Old World by Christopher Columbus in 1493. In 1934 a new hypothesis was put forward, that syphilis had previously existed in the Old World before Columbus. I In the 1980s palaeopathological studies found possible evidence that supported this hypothesis and that syp…
Prelude
- In August 1494, King Charles VIII of France led his army of 50,000 soldiers and a large artillery train into northern Italy. The soldiers were mostly mercenaries Flemish, Gascon, Swiss, Italian, and Spanish and were accompanied by 800 camp followers including cooks, medical attendants and prostitutes. Charles objective was to take over the Kingdom of Naples from Alphonso II so that h…
Symptoms
- The disease started with genital ulcers, then progressed to a fever, general rash and joint and muscle pains, then weeks or months later were followed by large, painful and foul-smelling abscesses and sores, or pocks, all over the body. Muscles and bones became painful, especially at night. The sores became ulcers that could eat into bones and destroy the nose, lips and eyes. …
Death
- During the Battle of Forova at Emilia in Italy on Charles retreat back to France, many soldiers were so ill they were unable to fight. On Charles return to France the army disbanded and the soldiers and their camp followers took the disease with them back to their respective homelands. Voltaire wrote :
Epidemiology
- By the end of 1495 the epidemic had spread throughout France, Switzerland and Germany, and reached England and Scotland in 1497. In August 1495 the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I proclaimed that nothing like this disease had been seen before and that it was punishment from God for blasphemy. By 1500 syphilis had reached the Scandinavian countries, Britain, Hungary, …
Names
- Syphilis had a variety of names, usually people naming it after an enemy or a country they thought responsible for it. The French called it the Neapolitan disease, the disease of Naples or the Spanish disease, and later grande verole or grosse verole, the great pox, the English and Italians called it the French disease, the Gallic disease, the morbus Gallicus, or the French pox, the Germ…
Signs and symptoms
- The contagion which gives rise to it comes particularly from coitus: that is, sexual commerce of a healthy man with a sick woman or to the contrary. The first symptoms of this malady appear almost invariably upon the genital organs, that is, upon the penis or the vulva. They consist of small ulcerated pimples of a colour especially brownish and livid, sometimes black, sometimes …
Terminology
- In 1527, Jacques de Bethencourt in his work New Litany of Penitence, introduced the term Morbus venerus, or venereal disease. Bethencourt rejected the term morbus gallicus, and suggested that since the disease arises from illicit love it should be called the malady of Venus or venereal disease. He also considered it was a new disease not known to the ancients and not appearing i…
Etymology
- The origin of the term syphilis The name for the disease, syphilis, originates from an epic Latin poem Syphilis, sive morbus gallicus, Syphilis, or the French disease, published in 1530 by Girolamo Fracastoro (L. Hieronymus Fracastorius). Fracastoro was a poet, mathematician and physician from Verona in the Republic of Venice, who in his work De contagione et contagiosis …
Literature
- Fracastoro blended the writings of the historian Gonzalo Hernandez de Oviedo y Valdez with a fable Metamorposes from the ancient Roman poet Ovid. In his poem Syphilis, sive morbus gallicus, Fracastoro tells of a mythical shepherd named Syphilus who kept the flocks of King Alcithous. When a drought affected Syphilus people, he insulted the Sun-God by blaspheming ag…
Society and culture
- 16th and 17th century writers and physicians were divided on the moral aspects of syphilis. Some thought it was a divine punishment for sin, and as such only harsh treatments would cure it, or that people with syphilis shouldnt be treated at all. In 1673, Thomas Sydenham, a British physician, wrote an opposing view that the moral aspect of syphilis was not the province of the …
History
- During the 18th century medical thinking on the disease began to advance. In 1736 Jean Astruc, a French royal physician and professor of medicine at Montpellier and Paris, wrote one of the first great medical works on syphilis and venereal disease, De Morbus Veneris. In 1761 the Italian anatomist and pathologist Giovanni Battista Morgagni published De Sedibus et Causis Morboru…
Discovery
- Up until the 19th century, there was still much confusion as to whether syphilis and gonorrhoea were manifestations of the same disease. In 1838 Philippe Ricord, a physician and surgeon who worked under Guillaume Dupuytren, a French anatomist and military surgeon, firmly established that syphilis and gonorrhoea were separate diseases and differentiated the three stages of syph…
Treatment
- The early treatments of syphilis In the early 16th century, the main treatments for syphilis were guaiacum, or holy wood, and mercury skin inunctions or ointments, and treatment was by and large the province of barber and wound surgeons. Sweat baths were also used as it was thought induced salivation and sweating eliminated the syphilitic poisons. Guaiacum was not effective a…
Usage
- .. in external use for dressing ulcers, abscesses and pustules. For internal use drink the first potion by the beaker twice a day: in the morning at sunrise and by the light of the evening star. The treatment lasts until the moon completes its orbit and after the space of a month conjoins again with the sun. The patient must remain in a room protected from wind and cold, so that fro…
Criticism
- Paracelsus (1493-1541) derided the use of guaiacum as useless and expensive and instead promoted mercury, metals being one of Paracelsus favoured medicinal treatments for disease. After a time however he did recognise its toxicity when administered as an elixir and resorted to using it either as an inunction, an ointment made from metallic mercury and rubbed into the skin…
Toxicity
- Mercury had terrible side effects causing neuropathies, kidney failure, and severe mouth ulcers and loss of teeth, and many patients died of mercurial poisoning rather than from the disease itself. Treatment would typically go on for years and gave rise to the saying,
Overview
The first recorded outbreak of syphilis in Europe occurred in 1494/1495 in Naples, Italy, during a French invasion. Because it was spread by returning French troops, the disease was known as "French disease", and it was not until 1530 that the term "syphilis" was first applied by the Italian physician and poet Girolamo Fracastoro. The causative organism, Treponema pallidum pallidum, was first identified by Fritz Schaudinn and Erich Hoffmann in 1905. The first effective treatment, S…
Historical treatments
There were originally no effective treatments for syphilis, although a number of remedies were tried. In the infant stages of this disease in Europe, many ineffective and dangerous treatments were used. The aim of treatment was to expel the foreign, disease-causing substance from the body, so methods included blood-letting, laxative use, and baths in wine and herbs or olive oil.
Origin
The history of syphilis has been well studied, but the exact origin of the disease remains unknown. There are two primary hypotheses: one proposes that syphilis was carried to Europe from the Americas by the crew(s) of Christopher Columbus as a byproduct of the Columbian exchange, while the other proposes that syphilis previously existed in Europe but went unrecognized. These are referred to as the "Columbian" and "pre-Columbian" hypotheses.
European outbreak
The first well-recorded European outbreak of what is now known as syphilis occurred in 1495 among French troops besieging Naples, Italy. It may have been transmitted to the French via Spanish mercenaries serving King Charles of France in that siege. From this centre, the disease swept across Europe. As Jared Diamond describes it, "[W]hen syphilis was first definitely recorded in Europe in 1495, its pustulesoften covered the body from the head to the knees, caused flesh t…
Historical terms
The name "syphilis" was coined by the Italian physician and poet Girolamo Fracastoro in his pastoral noted poem, written in Latin, titled Syphilis sive morbus gallicus (Latin for "Syphilis or The French Disease") in 1530. The protagonist of the poem is a shepherd named Syphilus (perhaps a variant spelling of Sipylus, a character in Ovid's Metamorphoses). Syphilus is presented as the first man to contract the disease, sent by the god Apolloas punishment for the defiance that Syphilus and hi…
History of diagnosis
In 1905, Schaudinn and Hoffmann discovered Treponema pallidum in tissue of patients with syphilis. One year later, the first effective test for syphilis, the Wassermann test, was developed. Although it had some false positive results, it was a major advance in the detection and prevention of syphilis. By allowing testing before the acute symptoms of the disease had developed, this test allowed the prevention of transmission of syphilis to others, even though it d…
Prevalence
An excavation of a seventeenth-century cemetery at St Thomas's Hospital in London, England found that 13 per cent of skeletons showed evidence of treponemal lesions. These lesions are only present in a small minority of syphilitic cases, implying that the hospital was treating large numbers of syphilitics. In 1770s London, approximately 1 in 5 people over the age of 35 were infected with syphilis. In 1770s Chester, the figure was about 8.06 per cent. By 1911, the figure f…
Arts and literature
The earliest known depiction of an individual with syphilis is Albrecht Dürer's Syphilitic Man, a woodcut believed to represent a Landsknecht, a Northern European mercenary. The myth of the femme fatale or "poison women" of the 19th century is believed to be partly derived from the devastation of syphilis, with classic examples in literature including John Keats' La Belle Dame sans M…