Syphilis reminds me of a dark mixture of cancer and HIV/AIDS. It has dormant stages, is sexually transmittable, has an incredible amount of guises, and if not treated right, it will eat you like no other disease can.
And it left its marks throughout thousands of years of mankind.
[This wax cast of the upper part of the face shows bilateral cicatricial ectropion of the eyelids. The forehead is bumpy and irregular from syphilitic gummatous destruction. (Source: Surgeons’ Hall Museums)]
But how did we treat Syphilis in the old days ?
Well, let’s first have a look at the four stages of the disease:
In the primary stage, painless ulcers or chancres appear on the genitals and if allowed to progress into the secondary stage, blotchy red rashes appear, usually on the palms of hands and soles of the feet. Occasionally, hair loss also develops at this stage. This is then followed by a latent stage during which sufferers have neither sign nor symptom of the disease. This stage can last for years. During the tertiary stage of syphilis, the skin, bones, internal organs, nervous system and cardiovascular system begin to be irreversibly damaged.
In protestant Europe, Mercury was considered as the remedy for Syphilis (and what not else): a common though expensive treatment, Mercury could be rubbed into the sores, eaten as pills, or injected directly into the urethra, as in the “Mercury douche” below.
[19th Century image of “Mercury douche.”]
Mercury has often been consumed in a medical context throughout history — for instance, during an exhumation, the hair of the great Mathematician and Physicist Isaac Newton appeared to contain high levels of Mercury, which he had taken himself by his own account.
In later periods of his life, Newton suffered from psychosis, insomnia and poor digestion, tremor and mental problems, and all of these symptoms can be attributed to Mercury ingestion.
And the first Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang (259–210 BC) — founder of the Qin dynasty — most probably died from consuming an elixir which contained Mercury,
because it was believed at the time that Mercury contained the secret to eternal life.Only it did not — Mercury is poisonous.
And as Mercury is highly toxic and causes severe neurological problems (cf. Newton) — as well as swollen gums, rotting teeth and hair loss — one sad truth later emerged from the way Mercury was used during hundreds of years in the fight against Syphilis:
The patients often died from Mercury use before they died from Syphilis.
SOURCES: the mentioned and footnoted sites.
Footnotes
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