A Cultural History of Syphilis

A doctor's reply to my post about what sickness can teach us

In response to my post last night in which I reflected on Franz Schubert’s desperate struggle with syphilis, and old friend in Dallas (who happens to be a medical doctor) sent me the following message:

I recognized the word “Lues.” as as referring to “lues venera’ (‘venereal pest’)— the name coined by Jean Fernelius, a Parisian teacher in his treaty dedicated to the affliction.

According to the paper Brief History of Syphilis by M Tampa, I Sarbu et al.:

The term ‘syphilis’ was introduced by Girolamo Fracastoro, a poet and medical personality in Verona. His work “Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus” (1530) encompasses three books and presents a character named Syphilus, who was a shepherd leading the flocks of King Alcihtous, a character from Greek mythology. In Fracastoro’s tale, Syphilus, mad at Apollo for parching the trees and consuming the springs that fed the shepherd’s flocks, vowed not worship Apollo, but his King. Apollo gets offended and curses people with a hidious disease named syphilis, after the shepherd’s name. The affliction spread to the whole population, including King Alcithous. The nymph Ammerice counseled the inhabitants to offer Apollo further sacrifices, one of which was Syphilus himself, and also to sacrifice to Juno and Tellus, the latter offering the people the tree of Guaiac (Guaiacum officinale), a very used therapeutic medicine in the time of Fracastoro.

I did NOT recognize the word “Gumma” in his school colleague’s mock business card. T. Pallidum” refers to Treponema pallidum endemicum, the causative agent of the illness.

Turns out a “Gumma” is a hideous “gummy” tumor caused by late stage syphilis.

Of special note in the Brief History of Syphilis is the following:

Laura M. Gough, specialist in history of medicine, notes that the war conditions [in the Italian War of 1494–1559] represented a favorable field for the first outbreak of syphilis. It has occurred during Italian invasion by the French armies, in a period of time when all great powers of Europe (France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal States) wanted to gain control over the Apennine Peninsula. As both French and Italian armies were made out of mercenaries brought from the entire Europe, and as the wars lasted for 30 years –a sufficient interval not only for marriages between mercenaries and local females, but also for rape and prostitution-the disease has spread rapidly across Europe as the mercenaries returned to their homeland.

Albrecht Duerer illustrated the point in a woodcut of 1496.

Note the contrast of his splendid plumed hat and flanking Coats of Arms with his pitiful outstretched, supplicating hands lifting his tunic to reveal his terrible lesions.

Such reflections are familiar to students of the 1918 Spanish Influenza, which seems to have emerged from the conditions of millions of men from all over Europe and the United States being thrown together in barracks and trenches with appalling sanitary conditions and generally weakened immune systems for months of poor sleep, bad food, and unrelenting high stress. Somehow, in almost 400 years, the Great Powers of Europe managed to learn nothing about the unforeseen calamities that ensue from war and therefore to avoid them.