Fachadas

Over time, physicians began to use mercury as a cure (see How the Disease Came to Be Called Syphilis), combining it with other ingredients including lard, turpentine, incense, lead, and sulfur.

One physician Giovanni de Vigo (1450–1525) decided that live frogs were a good addition though it is not clear exactly how the frogs were used. Those with syphilis sat in a tub in a hot, closed room where they could be rubbed with mercury ointments several times a day. Shakespeare notes the torments of syphilis and makes reference to the “tub of infamy.” (The nursery rhyme “Rub-a-Dub-Dub” is thought to be about syphilis.) As a result, mercury became strongly associated with the illness and was used until the 1940s.

However, few physicians left it at mercury. They added purgatives and tonics and provided bizarre dietary restrictions.

Today, it is known that mercury is actually quite toxic, but this was not known at the time. Though Bernardino Ramazzini (1633–1714) wrote On the Diseases of Workers and noted that mer-cury seemed to bring about ill effects, it was not until the 19th century that they realized that excessive salivation and mouth ulcers were signs of mercury “irritation,” not the sign of someone recovering from syphilis.

Another treatment that came from the New World was guaiac, also known as holy wood. The wood came from evergreen trees that were indigenous to South America and the West Indies. Those who used it felt that if the disease came from the New World then so should the treatment. It soon developed that the rich used holy wood and the poor used mercury.

Today, venereal disease victims are reluctant to discuss their ailments, but this was not the case in the 16th century. At that

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time, the culture thought nothing of sexual promiscu-ity among the upper classes, so there was no particular stigma to having a sexually transmitted disease. The specifics of how syphilis was treated were documented by a fellow named Ulrich Ritter von Hutten (1488–1523) who documented the horrors of his treatment process. Von Hutten wrote of enduring 11 mercury treatments over a period of nine years and then trying guaiac, which he said fully cured him. Lois Mag-ner, the author of A History of Medicine, notes that his death within a few years may indi-cate that he wasn’t as fully cured as he thought. Because syphilis was so unpredictable, there were examples to prove the “success” of every remedy.

A diagnostic blood test for diagnosing syphilis was created in 1906 by August von Wassermann (1866–1925). The bacterial cause of syphilis was not identified until the 20th century, and it took until then before any real progress was made against the disease. Salvarsan (an arsenical drug) was used before penicillin.

Then in the 1940s penicillin began to be used effectively.

earlyConCepTofConTagion

The Italian physician and scholar Girolamo Fracastoro who named syphilis was a colleague of Copernicus at the University of Padua. Fracastoro taught medicine at several universities and also conducted very noteworthy studies. His work on contagion,

Application of mercury (for syphilis),  after  a  painting  by  Bartholomäus  Steber

De contagione et contagiosis morbis (1546), was the first scientific writing that described the transmission of epidemics by transfer-able tiny particles or “spores” that could transmit infection. Fra-castoro believed that each disease was caused by a different type of rapidly multiplying minute body, which were transferred from the infector to the infected in three ways: by direct contact, by carriers such as soiled clothing and linen, and through the air. Although microorganisms had been mentioned as a possible cause of disease by the Roman scholar Marcus Varro in the first century b.c.e., Fracastoro’s was the first scientific statement of the true nature of contagion, infection, disease germs, and modes of disease trans-mission. His work attracted attention when it was introduced, but, because there was no science to move it forward, physicians more or less forgot about it until French chemist Louis Pasteur came up with germ theory in the 19th century.

famoUsrUlersTHoUgHTToHaveHadTHedisease

Several world leaders are now suspected of suffering from syphi-lis, and, because of its debilitating effects and its impact on brain function and personality, it may have affected history. Czar Ivan the Terrible of Russia (1530–84) became czar in 1547. Though he began his reign as a well-meaning leader, his children died at very young ages and his wife died in 1560. Ivan remarried and those children, too, were either unhealthy or stillborn. In 1564, Ivan’s own behavior became erratic, and he exhibited symptoms that suggest he was suffering from cerebral syphilis. In 1565, he began ordering executions of people, and a 19-year reign of terror began.

He and his sons raped the wives and daughters of those who were executed, and in 1581 he murdered his own son. He finally died in 1584. Many years later, his body was exhumed, and the specula-tive diagnosis was confirmed: Ivan had tertiary syphilis.

While it is often rumored that Henry VIII had syphilis, which would fit with his lecherlike image and murderous behavior, no one has ascertained that he actually had syphilis, and many feel that there are far too many other diseases that may have affected

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Henry. Diabetes and circulatory problems—he suffered a series of strokes prior to death—are high among the other suggestions physicians give as to the illness from which Henry suffered.