syphilis treatment in victorian times

In his 1530 poem Syphilis, sive morbus gallicus, Fracastoro described the use of guaiacum : ” .. in external use for  dressing ulcers, abscesses and pustules. Despite the developing studies during the first of half of the 19 th century, many remained to believe that Victorian public health was rather spiritual than scientific. 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. The Three Great Pandemics, History of Tuberculosis. Albert Ludwig Neisser, a German physician specialising in dermatology and venereology and who had been using some of Ehrlich’s earlier arsenicals to treat syphilis, described Ehrlich’s new drug : “Arsenobenzol, designated “606,” Some recent studies however have indicated that this is not the case and  it still may be  a new epidemic venereal disease introduced by Columbus from America. Syphilis was a capricious mistress and the Victorians were intolerant of those who crossed her path. [7, 8], 16th and 17th century writers and physicians were divided on the moral aspects of syphilis. Yet concealment was so common as to become the subject of fraught medical and social debate. De Vigo expressed the view that this was a new disease. These pimples are circumscribed by a ridge of callous like hardness. In 1943 penicillin was introduced as a treatment for syphilis by John Mahoney, Richard Arnold and AD Harris. The infection can be classi fi ed as congenital Paracelsus (1493-1541) formulated mercury as an ointment because he recognised the toxicity and risk of poisoning when administrating mercury as an elixir. Arsenic, mainly arsphenamine, neoarsphenamine, acetarsone and mapharside, in combination with bismuth or mercury, then became the mainstay of treatment for syphilis until the advent of penicillin in 1943. Part 1 – Phthisis, consumption and the White Plague. [7], In 1527, Jacques de Bethencourt in his work New Litany of Penitence, introduced the term Morbus venerus, or ‘ venereal disease’. The preferred treatment at all stages is penicillin, an antibiotic medication that can kill the organism that causes syphilis. But he’s nonetheless been dealt a terrible blow, all the more because he had believed himself cured. An alternative theory was put forward in 1934 by Richmond Cranston Holcomb that syphilis had already existed in the Old World before Columbus’ time, and in the latter part of last century palaeopathologists found possible evidence that this may have been so. [7, 8, 10]   As well, a rash of verrucous papules often broke out in the genital area. It appears from descriptions by scholars and from woodcut drawings at the time that the disease was much more severe than the syphilis of today, with a higher and more rapid mortality and was more easily spread , possibly because it was a new disease and the population had no immunity against it. In 1906 Paul Ehrlich, the famous German physician, who died in 1915, discovered Salvarsan 606 and Neosalvarsan 614, the world's first chemotherapeutic agents for systemic treatment of a micro-organism. Often patients would think that their disease had disappeared or been cured, only to have their bodies betray them with a resurgence of symptoms. The article also cited Butler (1933) as stating that historical evidence of aortic aneurysm being treated by Antyllus, a contemporary of Galen in Romans times, was evidence of the existence at that time of syphilis, and that Celsus accurately described a genital syphilitic chancre. Some thought it was a divine punishment for sin, and as such only harsh treatments would cure it, or that people with syphilis shouldn’t be treated at all. Antibiotic injections are the usual treatment. Sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s) have posed a threat to military service members throughout history. [24, 27, 32]  Baker and Armelagos (1988) concluded that pre-Columbian American skeletal analyses reflect a treponematosis that spread to the Old World through non-venereal contact, and that European social and environmental conditions at the time favoured the development of venereal transmission. 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. In 1673, Thomas Sydenham, a British physician, wrote an opposing view that the moral aspect of syphilis was not the province of the physician, who should treat all people without judgement. Crosby quotes Ulrich von Hutton as saying, “In the yere of Chryst 1493 or there aboute this most foule and most grievous disease beganne to sprede amonge the people.”  Crosby”s view was that treponematosis was originally a single disease which evolved into several related but distinct diseases and that venereal syphilis is the variant that developed in America, from which it probably was introduced to Europe with the return of Columbus. However specimens with evidence of treponeal disease were identified from North America dating back some 8,000 years. [32], A review of palaeopathogical studies of treponeal disease in the New and Old World by Baker and Armelagos in 1988 documented an abundance of pre-Columbian New World finds, but an absence of Old World finds, a finding that was reaffirmed by Powell and Cook and by Rothschild in 2005.

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