After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Gruesome History of Sexual Disease

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

*Warning: this episode contains discussions of puss*Gonorrhea and syphilis are no laughing matter, especially in a time before antibiotics.How were symptoms first recorded and what were the disturbing treatments people endured?Joining Anthony today as a special guest co-host is Cat Irving, Human Remains Conservator at Surgeons’ Hall in Edinburgh, to take us back through this gruesome history.Edited by Anna Brant and Hannah Feodorov. Produced by Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer is Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For centuries, infections like syphilis and gonorrhea were treated with remedies as brutal as the diseases themselves. In this episode, we are joined by the anatomist Kat Irving to explore the gruesome history of sexually transmitted diseases, where stigma met pseudoscience and desperation drove dangerous experimentation. From early misconceptions to toxic miracle drugs, we are going to explore the brutal reality of these diseases. welcome to After Dark. Hello there and welcome to After Dark. My name's Anthony. And I'm Kat.

And today we are talking about gonorrhea. Not just any old gonorrhea, the history of not, actually not just gonorrhea, the dark history of sexual disease. Because when Kat Irving, who is, as you will probably know by now, the human remains conservator at Surgeons Hall in Edinburgh, when Kat shows up, this is the shit we talk about. The dark history of sex. disease. I just going to fire straight into it. There's no point in hanging around the corridors on this one. What the hell is gonorrhea? Gonorrhea is a bacterial infection,

usually transmitted sexually. You say usually? What's the other way you can get it? It's sexually. It's sexually. It's sexually. Well, actually, I mean, we can get into some of the other ways people spread it later. Okay. Okay. Let's do it. that letter. Stay tuned for that. How else might you get gonorrhea? Yeah. So, you know, and it's been around for a long time. You know, it's been possibly mentioned in the Bible, possibly mentioned in ancient China. Gonorrhea, potentially gonorrhea is in the Bible. Yeah, in Leviticus. Of course it's in Leviticus. Yeah. Leviticus has mentioned of an issue of seeds and it's thought that that could be gonorrhea. Because gonorrhea, you know,

things will often get a little pussy. Oh, now there's a word. Yeah, I'm sorry, puss is going to come into this quite a bit. So do we have very, what's the, well, Bible, that's pretty bloody early, is that the earliest record of something gone really like? Now, I will point out, just in terms of the historical context of this, often when we're talking about diseases and their history, we're sometimes talking about things that are, like the disease. We can't say for certain because they weren't necessarily called the exact same thing. They certainly weren't testing for the particular bacteria at that point. So what's the earliest we can go back to on this?

We've also got a mention in China from Emperor Huang, which says at 2,600 BCE. So that's, you know, it's quite a while ago. That is a good old span of time. And, you know, that's just a mention, therefore something. and gonorific was probably there before that as well. But yeah. And are the symptoms presenting in very similar ways? Is that something?

You've mentioned Puss already. These are, oh God, Puss is such a weird, bloody thing. Okay. Now, today we're like, okay, gonorrhea, we'll go and we'll get an antibiotic and we'll get the sorted out. And we'll reach that part of this history at some point. But before that, this is a serious thing, particularly if you're a woman.

And even more so if you're a woman who's pregnant or who's having a child, these are serious issues that are coming up for societies all across that ancient world and then even up until the 19th century. Well, it's quite interesting, though, because, you know, gonorrhea, while you get the pussy bit. Yes. And a lot of people, there might be no symptoms. You know, you might be asymptomatic. And the symptoms in women may look a bit more like things that women may already have.

You know, you might get lower abdominal pain or you might get, you know, some bleeding, maybe a bit of discharge, things like that. You know, so things that women tend to go through regularly anyway. So it might just be seen, oh, well, you're having a bad month. You know, you know. So, in fact, there's a man called Benjamin Bell, you know, writing in the late 18th century who effectively says it doesn't affect women. Women can't get us. Yeah, it doesn't affect women. Whereas, of course, we know today that it can lead to things like pelvic inflammatory disease

and cause it problems with fertility. But in terms of gonorrhea, women were thought to be less troubled by it than men. You know, I mean, you can imagine a man having pus coming out of the end of his penis, he's going to make a noise about it. Indeed, I don't even want to know what that noise might be. But something has got to get said to him at some point. Now, one of the things that I am aware of, I think it's this one anyway, that gonorrhea is sometimes known as the clap. Yes.

Is it, is it this one? Yes, gonorrhea sometimes known as the clap. Why? A couple of different theories. Can I just say before you answer that question, I hope that my ancestors who survived the great Irish famine are incredibly proud of their descendant today that he is on a podcast talking about the clap. the clap.

Yeah. In this manner. I hope it was worth you all surviving so that I could do this. Right. Where does the clap come from? So one theory was that it was from Le Clappier. More French. More French.

More French. Or we can get even further into the French later. Le Clappier. And that was what they called the areas where the sex workers practiced from in medieval Paris. Okay. So Le Clappier, you went in, you came out, you had this problem, you had the clap. Right. So that's one theory.

Well, potentially makes sense, yes. Another idea is that, you know, you have gonorrhea, you go to pee, and the pain feels like a clap, you know. I'm not buying it. No, no. I've never clapped painfully. But just that sort of like, you know, you pee and suddenly the pain is so sudden that you get when you try and go. No, like, no, I'm not buying it. Okay.

Anyway, yes. And then there's another theory. And if you didn't like the last one, you might want to cross your legs now. Uh-uh. Okay? So, you know, you had pus coming out of the end of your penis. I didn't, just for the record. One did.

One had pus coming out of the end of your penis. It's thought that to make it better, you need to get rid of that. Fair enough. Fair enough. So you need to get the pus out. So the idea was that you could lay your male member into a book and then Stop it shut and that would squeeze the pus out.

Jobs a good. Are there actual records of people doing that? I'm really hoping that this is not true because I mean it's not great, is it? And it's also just not a medical procedure. I don't think it's going to help. That's not going to get. You know, it's not, you're not going to feel better after that.

Holy St. Joan. That is bleak. You just clap on your willy and a bit. book. That's, that's, why. Again, I'm confronted with the question of why we're ever asking Kat Irving on this podcast ever again. What kind of idea did you have getting in the own, Anthony? What were you thinking? Did you think I was going to be talking about Ruehers gardening? Yeah, that's what we wanted to talk about, Kat. No, don't know. Oh, I'm sorry. Right. So, so, okay, so that's all of those kind of things. But, God, that's, that's just, that's

taken my mind in so many different directions. Horrendous. Okay. But we are talking about something that was a serious problem for people at the time who got it. And we are then going to have to go from, okay, we have this problem. We actually don't know how to treat it. But because we're dealing with the 16, 17, 18th century, we're going to pretend we know how to deal with it. I'm imagining Mercury comes into this at some point. It always does. Oh, gorgeous. What an arsenic probably. Like, how are they trying to treat this? Right. So we're on gonorrhea at the moment. We are.

So the thing about gonorrhea, as I said, pus coming out at the end. Yeah. Yeah. But you're also having another problem. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. So you imagine that the pus is coming out because that bacteria is irritating the lining of your urethra. So, you know, the tube coming out.

So when you say coming out at the end, you literally mean coming out of the hole, not just around. No, of the whole. So the urethra is getting irritated And sometimes that irritation can cause it to narrow Okay Sometimes narrow to the point of closure And that means You're not going to wee

You're not going to wee Nothing coming out So where does the go? So this is the thing So, you know We have early treatments like the Mary Rose You can see that they had syringes for injecting mercury up it You know again

unblocking it. And would that have worked? Well, I mean, you know, it would... Asking for a friend. It would certainly have unblocked things to a certain degree, you know, in the same way. Well, you should have a needle up it, I suppose. Blowing up a straw, that kind of thing. Yeah.

And then they move on. And we get an instrument which is called, and you're going to like this, Anthony. We've already talked about this today. A boogie. Candle. Oh. So... They're lighting...

No. No, no, no, no. So you've got to imagine the word boogie comes from a town, the French-fied version of an Algerian town, which is where you got the best wax from. Right? And, you know, a candle, you'd make a candle, you got your wick, you'd dip it into the wax,

and you'd do that, and so you've got a fair-sized candle. But what they wanted to get rid of that obstruction, to that narrowing, is something, you know, that's long and thin, bit flexible. Okay. So they would just get a bit of string, just a light coating of wax, so it would stiffen it, but leave it flexible. And then you could push that up and unblock that narrowed stricter. They kind of made a willy pus candle.

A willy pus candle. But shoved it up. But shoved it up. And you would have these in a variety of different diameters. What time period are we talking about here? This is 18th century Going well into the 19th century And even into the 20th century

Though by that point they're starting to You know make nice sterile metal instruments I don't know if that makes it better It doesn't Come here Do you know they're pushing infection up into the body Is that a problem? This is a problem

Good, it sounds like it is And there are a lot more problems Okay So Oh my God This is why I I sent you a text apologising. Yeah, she sent me a text yesterday saying, sorry for the gonorrhea.

I hadn't read the brief yet. I was like, what? What are you talking about? Now I know. Yeah. Yeah, so you would have different diameters so you could go up. And I've seen, I think it's Benjamin Bell's. No, it's not.

There is a text which shows you the different diameter, different diameters of these bougie. And some of them get worryingly thick. Thick? You know, so the idea that you're pushing this up anywhere. is concerning, shall we say. But obviously, you know, sometimes you might push things up. Oh, God. Don't say too far.

Well, there is an insurgent's Hall collection. We've got a number of examples of where they've created a false passage. Oh, no. So they just pierced some other bit of flesh. Yes. And does we come through that as well? Yes. So you get false passages.

But the thing is that when you're pushing this up, you know, the blockage might be a bit more than just a boogey. Your wax instrument might be able to deal with. And so you could put something on the end of that. Oh, what? And usually the kind of things you're referring to had the word caustic in the name. So if I hear something as caustic, well, I think it's going to burn. That's exactly what's doing. So what is it?

So a very common one was called Lunar Kostick, and that's silver nitrate. Bloody crap. Yeah. Silver nitrate, and I have Googled this and completely ruined my algorithm. Silver nitrate, you can still buy it on eBay. Great. It can be used for burning off warts, things like that. So you imagine you're putting that up and you're burning through.

this stricter so that you can pee again. You're burning swollen flesh. Mm-hmm. So actually what you're doing is not necessarily, I can't even believe in saying this, you're not necessarily opening up the tube that's there. You're kind of cutting a new tube around the tube, because that tube is swollen.

Sometimes, like you say, you're getting this false passage, which may or may not help get the urine out. Maybe you're just actually causing an injury. but you've got to imagine even if you do burn through the stricture and allow this all to work properly again you're creating scar tissue there which then is going to narrow things further so you're just going to be coming back and getting this done

758 times for the rest of your life but you've got to imagine that what happens if you don't get this done go on what does happen if you don't get this done so we have many examples of this in Surgeon's Hall we had a surgeon you might have heard of him called Charles Bell Yes. Yeah, he's the one that did that famous painting of the tetanist, the opistotonous with the curve back. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. So he was also a surgeon. Right. And he wrote a book on diseases of the urinary tract. And as part of his research for that, he kept a lot of people who had this problem, which was known as Strictor of the Urethra. Okay. So we have a very large collection of these penises with stricter of the urethra at Surgeon's Hall. Stop it.

In fact, in my store, there are three shelves of these penises. Three shelves? Three shelves. Not three jars, three shelves. Three shelves. So that's how common this was. That's how common this was. And one of them was somebody who basically the stricter wasn't treated.

He couldn't pee. And so we get what's called extradization of urine. Oh, God. Extra. Okay, more visation. I don't know what that is. It basically means it can't come out where it's supposed to come out. So it's basically being forced into the surrounding tissue.

And then what? So he has urine going down into scrotum, into the tissue around the urethrin, his penis. So everything is just swelling full of weed. Everything's just swelling up. It's also backing up. So you've got to imagine the urine comes from your kidneys. It goes down the ureters into the bladder. And he's backed up all the way to his kidneys.

So his kidney, we've got his kidneys as well. The kidneys have swollen. And on top of this, we also have a cast, which shows, you know, it's a cast from about he's tea. In fact, I think you may have commented on this when you came to life. Do you know what? I'm just thinking. Some things in my head going, I think I've seen this.

Yeah. And, you know, this extravization of urine into the surrounding tissue. Again, there's infection. This is going to be riddled with bacteria. He ends up with gangrene of the penis. I saw that. Yeah. I remember.

gangrene of the... I mean, sure, that's just going to have to come off. Well, it did. Well, it... After he died. He didn't survive this. So, again, it's a serious, serious illness. You know, this is not, you know, just something you don't worry about when you, you know, you get it on a night out.

Look, everyone's human and you laugh at these things and, you know, whatever, it is what it is. Yeah. And we're all children. But when, if you were sitting on the side of your bed, having had an encounter in the, what was a clapperie or whatever you said, clapiere. Clapier. If you were doing, and then you got up the next morning or two days later and you went to have a wee and you're like, Jesus, that's burning. You would be like, this could be the end of my life.

Yeah, absolutely. And this is actually, we have a famous sufferer, James Boswell. Oh, yeah, the diary man. And in his diaries, I think it's 1862, 1863, he's recording an affair he has with an actress called Anne Lewis. Okay. Oh. Yeah. He refers to...

Actresses, I know well. He refers to her as Louise. Okay. And he says, I this day began to feel an uncomfortable alarm of unexpected evil, a little heat in the member of my body sacred to Cupid. Oh. Yeah. And then later on he says, I've had two visitations of this calamity. The first lasted 10 weeks, the second four months. Oh, God. And I've read different accounts that Boswell actually had gonorrhea between 16 and 19 times in his life.

And so it's not just one infection. No, you can be repeatedly infected. And again, we've got another case at Surgeon's Hall of somebody who has a very, very, very, severe stricter. He can't pee at all. And he reports that he's had gonorrhea, attacks of gonorrhea. He has to have this information prized out of him because, again, that stigma associated with the neural disease, three times over a course of 20 years. Okay, can I ask you a question? If you're having repeated infections, is it like tonsillitis where, oh my God, this is terrible, but actually the body can take over and cure it itself, or is it a case that you then have 16 different types of gonorrhea? Do you know what I'm trying to say?

Yeah, whether you're getting different strains of gonorrhea infected. And I think that's the case. You know, you're getting this kind of like different things. You know, it's not like you have measles you have at once and then your body's going, no way to how to deal with that. No, it's going, that's a difference because bacteria have so many variations and it's going to be, you'll have 16 different types of that. I'm just thinking, like, imagine showing up to your doctor and be like, I need the,

I need the bougie thing again. You're going to have to burn a new hole up there. It's like, oh my God, that is crazy. Okay. Now, obviously, we're approaching this somewhat lighthearted, but we have underlined the fact that there's a really serious inference to this. Yeah. Serious condition.

And for women as well, this is going a lot more hidden. Even though their problems are gone or are entirely disregarded at this point. Yeah. And so they're thinking what the hell is going on. I can't even get this. But actually, well, as you said, it's being sold as, oh, well, this is just part of other things that are happening to you anyway. And of course, while it's not being acknowledged that they're having problems with it, they can get blamed for it. Yeah, somehow.

Yeah, well, as you just said with Boswell, he's going. I know this came from a woman. She's fine, but I'm not now and it's all her fault. Yeah. Okay. The additional leap from this now is something that is looming far more large in 18th and 19th century social and cultural history that I have come across far more than gonorrhea, which would be syphilis. Siphilis I've encountered, not on a personal basis, thankfully, but in an archival basis far more because often the effects are not confined to. the groin or to the genitals. Yeah.

And can so present in a far more public way. Absolutely. So let's talk a little bit about the distinction between gonorrhea and syphilis then and how they, how were they were viewed? If it was, I'm presuming at some point, they thought it was either the same thing or the continuation of the same thing or an advancement of gunnery or something. There absolutely were people who were thinking they were the same disease. Okay.

So John Hunter, you know, the Scottish anatomist who moved down. down to London, who was working in the 18th century, he absolutely thought that syphilis and gonorrhea were the same thing. And again, remembering at this point, they've got no idea of germ theory, you've got no idea about what bacteria is. But he effectively thought that it was down to where you were exposed. I see.

So, you know, where this infection, and as I say, they don't understand about the bacteria, how it got into your body. So he thought that if you got it on a hard area of your penis, and again, it's focusing on penises. Then you would get the chanker that was the initial stage of syphilis. Okay. So the sore, basically. The sore, yeah.

If you got it on a mucous membrane, then you would get the pussy reaction of gonorrhea. Okay. Yeah. So this was John Hunter's theory. And John Hunter was a good scientist, so he decided to test his theory. on himself. No. Oh, but he did test it.

He did test it. He got a penis, as I say. Good for him. We don't know whose penis it was. It's often assumed that it was himself because how would you convince somebody to go through this? Yeah. Well, yeah, I don't know.

Money, I suppose, but even still. Well, I mean, you know, maybe the money changed hands. Certainly takes the penis. Yeah. And he gets a sort of a needle. and he gets some pus from somebody. Where did you get that? With a saw that has wanted treatment.

And so he takes some of the pus and he puts it onto the, you know, onto the shaft of the penis and onto the glands of the penis. And lo and behold, they get both syphilis and gonorrhea. And he was just like, hallelujah, this proves that I'm right. You know, they're getting both because they've had it on, you know, they've been exposed to it on both areas. These people need hobbies. People are always saying,

oh, social media is such a bad thing. This guy wouldn't have prodded himself with syphilis if he had Instagram. I think people have done worse things to get famous on Instagram, to be fair. That could be true, actually, yeah. But right, so now somebody somewhere has both, well, mind you, as you say, they don't know that it's both gonorrhea and syphilis do that because they can't ask for. They've got both reactions. They've got the pus and they've got the chanker.

Glamorous, listen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Full house. So, yeah. Yeah, so clearly that one piece of pus has caused both gonorrhea syphilis, they're the same thing. Chances are they just took it from somebody who had both gonorrhea and syphilis. And that's why this happened. Now, when I think syphilis, as I so often do, I am thinking the mid to late 19th century into the 21st century.

I am thinking pictures that I've seen of probably poorer but not always men and women who are starting to lose part of their face. So maybe starting with a nose that starts to essentially decay in front of your eyes. And then you have fake, often leather appendages that are put on to cover something that might go over your eyes. So it looks like there is some kind of a back, well, there is some kind of a, a disease eating away at your face from the most extreme points back. How do we go from, I have, I've caught this venereal disease or this sexually transmitted disease, and now my face is starting to decay, essentially. How do we get there?

Okay. It's a long journey with syphilis. Cephalis is in for the long haul. Oh, great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, gonorrhea, I mean, as we said, we've got this, you know, Boswell saying, you know, first attack was 10 weeks or whatever it was. You've got a more finite period of time.

Cephalis, first of all, you start off with that chanker that I mentioned, just a little saw, which you will get wherever the bacteria has gotten into your body. Okay. So, you know, that might be, you know, the penis, vagina, cervix, anus, mouth, all these kind of things. I saw one model which had the chancor on the ear. Wow. Yeah.

Doing things differently. To me, certainly. Hey, we do not Kingshame on AFRARCARC. No, absolutely not. Yeah, so you get your chanker, and the chanker's there for a few weeks. At that point, you're very, very infectious. Okay. And you probably know this isn't grace.

You might not know it at all. I mean, you think, you know, if it's on the top of your penis, you're going to be aware of it. I will. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, don't doubt that at all. If it's on your cervix or in your anus, you might not see it. You might be aware that something's,

a little bit off, but you're not going to have that visual indication. Yeah. So, you know, that's your first sign, but that goes away. And then you think, few, whatever that was, maybe a bit of gonorrhea.

Yeah. I didn't have all the bad swelling, but we're fine now. We're okay. A couple of weeks later, after that's gone, you'll start to get different symptoms. Maybe aching joints, you might get a rash. Rashes were very, very common and a very visual thing, you know,

so you might have a sense of shame around that. It was particularly on the hands and the soles of the feet. And would you know that this was linked to the canker that you had previously, or would you just be like, hey, people get culls, people get rashes? Yeah. I mean, that's the thing that, you know, especially if you hadn't noticed that chanker to begin with. You know, and syphilis is sometimes known as the great imitator. So, you know, you've got to think some of these symptoms could sound like a lot of other things.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you might not be linking those things necessarily. Exactly. You know, and it's quite generalized.

You know, nothing, you know, you might think you've got a very bad flu with a rash, you know, something like that. But again, that's going to go away. Yeah. Yeah. So what? 10 days later? You might have a few weeks. You might have two months of this.

And again, it does become, people do become aware that this is linked to that chancor. So, you know, for some young men, this could be like, you know, like a rite of passage, something you go for. And then that's, that's it. But once that rash and everything has gone away, you get into a latent period. And that bacteria gets deep into your body. I'm scared now. Yeah.

I'm scared for it. And it could be a year later. It could be 20 years later. You know, a long time after you. might start to show the signs of what's known as tertiary syphilis. Okay. And this is when you can get things like it could affect your heart and you just drop down down from a heart attack.

Okay. And in that case, you're probably not aware. You just have a heart attack. Nobody will ever know that you're a tertiary syphilis. Yeah, that's it. You know, before any, you know, modern testing things like that, just one of those things that happens. You can get these things which are called gumma, which are sort of connective tissue,

sort of like a ball that forms like a, a, a, sort of like a ball that forms, like a, almost like a tumour, but it's not cancerous. You know, this is, this is just a, it's referred to as benign. Okay. But benign means it's not going to metastasize. It's not cancerous, that kind of thing. Not benign as in nice. Very, very important.

Very, very important to make that distinction. Because these are the things that can often cause ulceration, you know, and you can get, you can get problems which are, you know, causing infections of bones. And these are the things that you can start to get sores opening up. you can get these other things that might destroy your nose and they do seem to particularly like that area. But we've got examples of skulls at Surgeon's Hall where they've just got huge holes in them.

Oh, so the bones are getting, it's not just the flesh. It's not just the flesh. It can destroy the underlying bone as well. And again, you can get syphilitic osteitis where the bones themselves are infected and when you see this, they look thickened and rough in a way that you don't see in, you know, a healthy person.

Right. And again, that's going to lead to aches, pains, things like that. But, you know, some of the destruction this can do is absolutely terrible. And terrifying, because it is just one of those things. And you see it depicted in TV sometimes because it is particularly terrifying. That visual of, as I say, the face being deformed or the impact that it can have on your cognitive ability as well, right? And this then becomes, particularly in the 18.

19th and early 20th century, a real visual reminder of stigma. Often, for instance, if a woman has married a man and the man is unfaithful and he gets syphilis elsewhere, he brings it back into the family home, he ends up having latent symptoms for 20 years or whatever. And she, in the space of a couple of years, ends up starting to lose part of her face. And these are respectable families. So it doesn't have class borders in that sense. And it becomes very socially visible and a marker of shame I'm imagining. Do you think that's fair? Absolutely.

And it's also really interesting the way that I can see this looking at some of the records for some of the people who we have at Surgeons Hall. So, for example, we have one woman who was from, you know, a well-to-do family. And she, you know, through her life, she was told that she had tuberculosis. and then when they did an autopsy when she died, they were just like, no, no, this is syphilis. Right. But again, this is not somebody that you would associate with syphilis.

Whereas at the very beginning of the 20th century, I can't remember if it's 1908 or 1909, we get the Vassaman test. And this means you can say definitively whether something is syphilis or not. Because of the different bacterial structure? Because you can look at the bacteria itself. And we have this other woman who is described in really terrible language, you know, about her being, you know, a dissolute and a drinker.

And, you know, they're very, very negative about it, very much a more unfortunate member of society. But they're absolutely appalled because they've done the Vassman test twice. And she doesn't have syphilis. But they feel absolutely sure she should because of the lifestyle that she's leading. Oh, that's interesting, isn't it? becomes this kind of moral stick with which women, again, are beaten with or are hushed up if they are of a different class of society or whatever. And also, I presume they will very often be sure they might draw conclusions, especially at upper echelons of society where they're going,

oh, the women have been betrayed by their men. The men have brought this in. But then when you go down into the working poor, it's like, oh, the women have done this to themselves, that they're engaging in sex work or they're having a disabled lifestyle or whatever it is by their standards. Of course, I'm talking now. I'm looking here on my notes. And we're talking about these people who potentially had or haven't had syphilis or gonorrhea and trying to differentiate. Here, look, a caveat here, we don't know that these people definitely had syphilis, but these are some people in the past who it's being talked about that it might explain some of medical symptoms that they were experiencing. I'd like to get your input on this. Well, the first one is actually a little bit more definite because Al Capone.

Al Capone was in the 20th century. He was living after the Vassaman test. And while he was in, I think it was an Atlanta prison, don't quote me on that. One of the prisons that he was in, they do the Vassaman test, he does have syphilis. And it's really, really interesting because obviously you're talking about a sort of a neurodegeneration in syphilis. And neurocephalus is one of these things going to happen in tertiary syphilis. This kind of idea that it can really impair mental faculty. In the early stages, you could get like moments of genius, you know, like moments of brilliance,

interspersed with, you know, delusions of grandeur, terrible suicidal depression. And then it would just go to the point where, you know, you would be having seizures and you would just be in this constant state of lethargy. And there's pictures of Al Capone later in life. And you can see that. If you compare that to his younger days, these pictures where he just, it just seems like the personality has been drawn out of him. Right.

So this is something that is long term. You're going to be left with it for a very long time. There's no recovery from this. You're not going back. Yeah. So by the time you get to tertiary, there's nothing you're getting back even with penicillin or whatever. Like, you're not coming back at that point. Certainly any kind of treatment is not going to reverse the decline. Sure. Wow. Okay. Here are some other people that we are not definitely saying had syphilis. Yeah. There's always the caveat. There's always a problem with any kind of retrospective diagnosis,

especially of something with syphilis is kind of stigma because nobody is talking about that. They're not writing it in the medical records. They're not advertising that they had this. One name that we don't need to worry too much about because he's been dead for so long is Henry VIII. Yeah, a lot of people have said that this was leading to Henry VIII's problem in later life.

I think that's incredibly unlikely. Probably not, I wouldn't. I mean, I don't know, but like... Yeah. I mean, one of the things, is that even at that early stage, you know, the first outbreak of syphilis was 1495 in Europe. So not long before, but even by the time we're getting to, you know, in the middle of the 16th century, we're getting mercury as a treatment. And as far as I'm aware, I'm not a Tudor historian, so, you know, I'm sure there are people who know more about this than I do. There doesn't seem to be any record that he was ever given mercury.

And he was given a lot for different ailments. So, you know, I don't think, you know, and again, as I say, I'm not a Tudor historian. I'm sure there are lots of people who would have better knowledge about this than I do. If he got Mercury, they'll tell you in the comments. That's how you can find out. So that's Henry VIII. I mean, I didn't realize the first case of syphilis was, what did you say, 1495? 1495, massive outbreak.

A massive outbreak. Massive outbreak. The French have invaded Naples. And while they're in Naples, they, you know, they've, they've, laid siege to the city, they get in, they have a celebration, and all of a sudden, everyone's suffering. All the soldiers are, you know, and it said that you could hear the screams around the city. And it seems that this initial outbreak was much faster progressing than it would be later. And you can think of that in the same way that the way COVID changed, you know,

that when people first got COVID, that it was a lot more severe, that it was happening much more quickly, you know, and again, common in an early outbreak. And then the, those soldiers all dispersed, you know, they get chucked out of Naples, they go back to wherever they've came from, and then very quickly it spreads across the whole of Europe. So France is riddled. France is riddled. So, yeah, and it's initially called the pox. Yeah.

And the French will call it the Italian pox. Right. And the Italians will call it the French pox. Yes, yes, yes. The English called the French fox for a long time as well. The Scots call it the Grand Gau. Oh. Yeah, yeah, which I think it's, you know, it's...

Highfalutin. Yeah. But again, just two years later, you know, showing how rampant it is in Scotland. 1497, you get the Grand Gaur Act in Scotland. Stop. Within two years. Within two years. And basically, they tell anyone that's showing any symptoms to line up on a beach and leaf,

and they get transported over to Inchkeith Island and left there. Stop it. Oh, my God. Nobody was probably coming forward for that. I'm sure somebody probably was. There was also, if you had symptoms and you didn't come forward and they found out, then you would get branded. Oh God.

Syphritics just have something on the side of your face or in your neck or somewhere on your chest. Jesus. The other person I have here, I'm leaving this one, one of them particularly until last,

but the other one I have here is Beethoven. Yeah. I mean, it's the 18th century. Yeah, I mean, some people think that's why he went deaf. Uh-huh, sure. There are even suggesting, you know, I said that you could have those moments of brilliance,

that this was what led to his great symphonies. Again, there are problems with retrospective diagnosis. People love these things, don't they? It makes a nice story. Yeah. I'm not even sure if it makes sense, though. Like, yeah, you could make it make sense very easily,

as you say, moments of brilliance, the deafness, the erratic behavior at certain points. But, like, also, we don't know. Like, yeah, there's a lot going on there. That could be a lot of things. This one, yeah, it's interesting. Abe Lincoln. Yeah, I mean, people say that he had it,

that he gave it to his wife, things like that. Mary Tart. Yeah, again. Hey, Mary, isn't that like the show? I need to see that musical. Is it a musical? I don't know. It's like a stage show called, oh Mary, not Hey Mary, oh Mary. That's what it's called. Yeah. So again, he's another potential syphilitic. As I say, very, very difficult to actually tell these things. But one that we do have a much better idea of is a French writer called Alphonse Dode. Okay. And he ended up being treated for what's known for neurocifalists. It was often known at that point as General Priestess of the Insane. So what time period is this?

This is 1860s. Okay. And his doctor was Jean-Martin-Charkour, who was a famous French neurologist, and he said that his case of general priestess of the insane meant that he was lost. And so they gave him a lot of experimental treatments. Which was?

One of them is called Sire's suspension. What did you say? Sire. S-Y-R-E. S-R-E. Yeah. And it basically means that they take a part of your body, like your jaw and just hang you up by that for up to a minute at time.

To treat you for syphilis? Yeah. It's not going to work. It's not going to work. He gets dietary treatment, which involves a soup, which he writes that the results worse than death itself. Oh, God. And what's the other one?

He gets brown saccharred serum. What the hell is that? So Brown-Sacard was, again, a French doctor. And he noticed that if he injected himself with extracts of guinea pig testicle. For fuck's sake. How no, stop. Who is discovering...

Do you know what? I have a bit of a problem. What I need now is guinea pig testicles. Yeah. Who thinks that? That's insane. He did. And he said that this had those...

of making the arc of his urine stronger. I quit this podcast. This is it. This is the line in the sand. So effective... Wait, the arc of his urine? Yes. As in like how far he could we?

Yes. Okay. But still riddled with syphilis. We don't know if he had syphilis either. Oh. He was just a doctor. And effectively what he's doing is discovering testosterone.

It's not going to get cold. That's what I was going to say. It's not going to get cold testosterone for another 50 or so years. But he starts to maybe say this would be good for syphiletics. Please, if you're at home, do not inject yourself with guinea pig testosterone testicles. Don't do that. That is not something. That is not what we're advocating here on After Dark.

Very much, like, what is the opposite of that? Leave the test days in the guinea pigs. Please, if you have any sense of decency. Well, talking about these treatments, there's no guinea pigs in this. I am looking at a picture here in great after dark tradition of the martyrdom of Mercury. And this is a load of lads and is all lads being treated for syphilis in various ways, shapes and means. Let me have a look here at what they are doing. There is one guy.

Oh, he's covered in body sores that looks a little bit like, oh, there's a dog licking his foot. My dog licks my foot all the time, but I don't have syphilis. but he looks quite leprous actually. It reminds me of some of the medieval depictions of leprosy. So this would be this rash that I was talking about that you got with the secondary syphilis. But he has that thing, I don't know why this frightens me so much, but he has that thing across his face.

Now this isn't a prosthetic in any way, shape or form, but it is just a piece of cloth that's tied around him and clearly he started to lose his nose so that he's in the bottom left of the thing. Then there's another guy who is being chiseled, question mark. It looks like, oh no, no, he's putting a heated thing on his leg because you can see the steam rising up. And he looks like he's in fairly bad pain and there's loads of tools down there. So he's obviously got some kind of a thing.

Why is that dog licking that other man's foot? What's that supposed to be telling me? I talk's just light-licking things. I know, but don't lick syphilis. And then you have another fellow who's in the middle of the picture and he is having his scalp taken off by the looks of that. Yeah, that's not going to help. That's not going to help.

Now, are we to believe that that's going down to bone there, or are we to believe that he's trying to get into the brain there? I mean, I think it's probably an attempt to try and do something about, you know, getting, there were ideas about, you know, getting the evil out. Okay. And then, oh, my God, what's this guy doing? Then, okay, there's a little child in the middle of this heating up tools, so good for him.

I hope, at least it kept busy, I suppose. And then in the back of it, there's the fella who seems to have heat coming out of either his mouth or his ear. And another fella is holding him in place while putting something hot into his mouth. I don't know what's going on there. Yeah. There was a thing that was very common.

I mean, we mentioned Mercury earlier. Mercury was the treatment for syphilis. Okay, yeah. You know, and one of the ways they would apply, And there are reports, not even reports, textbooks written about this into the mid-19th century was mercury fumigation, where you would be exposed to mercury vapor. I see.

So that's what's probably happening there. Now, in the bed, I will say behind them, I'd miss this the first time around. There seems to be some women, and they look like actually quite comfortable beds, but that's probably neither here nor there. But there are some kind of procedures going on there in the background as well. And also there's all kinds of like apothecary things on the walls. It is, it's not an image of great crack.

I'll say that. Okay, so we have Mercury, which you have mentioned. This is, oh, look, there's a 16th to 19th century saying, A Night with Venus, a Lifetime with Mercury. What does a lifetime what Mercury actually look like? It's not going to be good. No. You know, because, I mean, the thing about Mercury is, it's not nice.

and the idea of treating syphilis with Mercury came very, very early on after that first outbreak in 1495 and actually came with a man who thankfully is known as Paracelsus because his full name is quite a mouthful Oh God Therillian, let's see if I can remember Philippus Cyrillius Theophrastus Bombastus von Hornheim

Stop it! How the hell does he become known as Paraceliseltus? Well, he's trying to say, like, he's beyond Celsius. He's trying to show that he is a great scientist. Oh, he needs to calm down. Yeah. And he came up with his theory, which basically said the dose makes the poison. So, you know, there are things that are bad for you, but you just have small amounts of them. Maybe that's good.

Yeah. You know, and so he had this idea with Mercury, that Mercury, you know, in small doses, might be able to do something. Is there anything in us? I mean, the thing is, you know, like, you've got the kind of chemotherapy idea that you have something, you get to kill the disease before it kills you. Okay. You know, so maybe if you got mercury, you know, if you put it on that chancor early enough, it could kill the bacteria before it's spread to the rest of your body. Possibly that would be effective. Okay.

But largely, no. It'll have gone on. Yeah. And the thing about mercury is that exposure to mercury can cause you to have rashes. Right. It can cause you to have, you know, sort of problems with your thought processes. It can cause you to have, you know, aches and pains and cold and flu-like symptoms. So this is sounding quite a lot just like having syphilis.

Yeah. You know, and then long-term exposure to mercury can lead to you having your teeth fall out and your hair fall out and your kidneys fail and things like that. Yeah, not great life. It's not good. You know, it's not what you want in the life. long term, or even really in the short term. Or even in the medium term or any term. So, okay, we have

this going on, but one thing that I do know is that despite the public shame that's attached to syphilis and all the moralising that goes on around it, governments around Europe, particularly, but not just Europe, have an invested interest in trying to get to the bottom of this

because one of their main arms of state, the army, is very often riddled with syphilis. And so... Gonorrhea. And gonorrhea. So they want to get to the bottom of this. So we've gone through Mercury.

We have governments going lads. We need to get this under control to whatever extent that we can. What impact does that have that government is involved at different levels? And when do we start to see the more meaningful cure start to come into the picture? Okay. So first of all, I mean, in Britain, you know, mid-ninth century, height of empire building, you know, armies very, very important. you get what's called the Contagious Disease Act. And the Contagious Disease Act effectively comes in in the 1860s.

And it says that it's only for certain cities which have army bases or ports where you might have a lot of sailors. Again, because you're not controlling the men who might be going to visit sex workers. You're trying to control the sex workers so they can't give it to men. He is. Yeah. Because, you know, why would you ask a man to keep it in his pants? They have no control over themselves whatsoever. Exactly.

So it means that if you're a woman in one of these towns, which they think is more likely to be frequented by soldiers, that you can be forcibly inspected to see if you have a venereal disease, if they think that you might be using the terminology of the time, a prostitute. Who could inspect you? You know, the authorities. Any of the authorities. Yeah. Whoa.

And by thinking you're a prostitute, that means, you know, if you're a woman walking alone after dark or, you know, somebody who's not in the right place at the right time. You know, an unaccompanied woman. So. A poor woman. A couple of women together. Yeah. These are people who might go through this kind of inspection. And there's a woman called Josephine Butler who campaigned against the contagious.

Disease Act. And she describes this as surgical rape. Yeah. In the 19th century. In the 19th century. Whoa. Good for her. I've never heard of her before. And her campaigning does end the Contagious Disease Act. If they think that you might have venereal disease, then you can be made to go into a lock hospital, which was a place specifically for treating sexually transmitted diseases. But only the women. You could get men in there as well. Okay. Okay. Good. largely women, largely women, for three months.

To let it get through your body or whatever. And often they would be, like, they would have their heads shaved while they were in there, you know, treatment with mercury, that kind of thing. And then there's some amendments to the Contagious Disease Act. They're not good amendments. Like, you know, it extends the number of cities that this applies to. And then you get one which says that the time that you can be made to be in a lot of hospital for is up to a year. So essentially you could be put under lock and key because somebody suspected maybe because you were out at a certain time of night that you were a sex worker, as you say, in the language of the day a prostitute and just be locked off for you.

Yeah. And as I say, you might just have a rash or, you know, something like that. You know, it might not be something that has anything to do with a sexually transmitted disease. Right. So that's one of the sort of like the government ways of trying to control this. So that's not. good. No. And that's not having any real effect, I would imagine. It's not having any real effect. So, and again, campaigning, there were a lot of campaigns. I mean, the contagious disease acts weren't applied in Scotland, but you still have people letter writing in Scotland going, this is abominable. You have to do something about this. That the act was abominable. That the act was abominable. So, you know, that's how wide the horror of it is. And in Glasgow,

you get the Glasgow system where they don't have the Contagious Diseases Act, but they basically have a very similar system that acts between the police and the lock hospitals and the the Magdalene institutions and things like that which can have effectively the same effect. Okay. So there is incarceration. Yeah. Yeah. Mostly aimed at women. Women who may or may not have been sex workers. And either way it's bizarre. And either way, it's not good. You know. Penicillin then comes into the picture when? So this is a really, really interesting one. Penicillin, we get that in the light 1920s.

We'd already had a cure for syphilis by that point. Oh, what was the preview? 1910 we get Salversan. Salver? Salver san. Okay. And this is invented by a German scientist called Paul Erlich. Good man, Paul.

Salversan is good. It does not involve mercury as a treatment for syphilis. Okay. What is it? Does involve arsenic. Oh, great. Perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, just what you want. So, and the thing... It's always one or the other, isn't it? Yeah, the thing about Salversan is that in order to be effective, you've got to have regularly spaced doses, and you have to have a complete treatment. And it's got arsenic in it, so it's got horrendous side effects. So a lot of people have the first dose and go, not doing that again.

It's not worth that. Yeah, yeah. So they don't complete treatment, not effective. So it's there, not great. But it would have worked. It did work. It did work. It did work, but the side effects were horrendous.

And you might get arsenic poison. So you could be vomiting. You'd have headaches. You'd be shivering. You'd be cold. You'd be sticky. You'd be wet. All of the arsenic things.

All of that. So then we get penicillin. That comes along in the late 1920s. Okay. And they very quickly realize penicillin is an antibiotic. Yes. And that's good. Yes.

But the problem is that while they realize it, it takes them a while to be able to manufacture penicillin in any kind of, of quantity to make it an effective treatment. So it's only really when you start to get to 1940 that we're getting it as an effective, you know, mass-produced treatment. And at that point, it's almost entirely goes into men in the army with sexually transmitted diseases.

I see. And that's good. It's effective. It does the job. Well done. However, however, there are some really other awful things going on at this time. And to be honest, syphilis is fucking dreadful. What is going on at that time to research syphilis is man's inhumanity to man.

And to me, it is much, much worse. Because, you know, they've decided that they need to try and figure out, you know, syphilis has this progression. They need to study it. They need to figure out what's going on to understand syphilis properly. And you do that with proper scientific method. You have a study. I'm worried about where this is going. Yeah, you should be.

So what they do is they go to Alabama. And they recruit 600 poor black sharecroppers. Shit. Yeah. And effectively, they tell them, they don't tell them what the study is. They just say,

come here regularly for checkups, and we will give you free medical care. Yeah. 301 of those men have syphilis. 299 do not. They're the control, because it's scientific experiments. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

They're not telling them what the study is about. They're not telling the men who have syphilis. So this is 1932. This is when the study begins. And then penicillin comes along. End of the Second World War, they start rolling it out to the general population. By 1947, it is the standard treatment for syphilis. And it is very, very, very effective.

None of the men in the Tuskegee syphilis experiment are ever offered penicillin. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment continues until 1972. What? Yeah, absolutely. In that time, 28 people die of syphilis. 100 die from complications related to syphilis.

40 patients' wives are infected with the disease, and 19 children are born with congenital syphilis. Oh, my... What country are these doctors from? This is America. This is the USA. The experts are from... Yeah.

America. And it always... it only ends in 1972 because of a whistleblower. Oh my God. That is bleak, isn't it? Yeah. Those are those types of things that you hear about that you kind of go, yeah, we don't deserve nice things. No.

That is, that is, there's cruelty and then there's that. Yeah. I mean, that is so long. You know, that's 25 years where these men could have been treated. and bringing it into new generations of people. Absolutely. And spreading it amongst family lines and all kinds of things. That's the thing.

How have I never heard of that? That is the stuff of nightmares. Yeah. It does go to show as well, though, how these, you know, again, in certain parts of this conversation, we've taken a purposefully lighthearted approach to them, but it does go to show that these sexually, the history of these sexually transmitted diseases

can really guide as a path through some of the most ingenious things that humans are capable of in terms of the discovery of penicillin and how that can be applied and the medical treatments that can change. But then also some of the more bizarre moralistic stuff alongside what is essentially then human experimentation in the 20th century into the decades our parents were born. Well, I mean, I was born in the 1970s. So, you know, this is very close. to us. Yes.

Yes. Wow. What a fascinating if grim at times history. Yeah. The whole swath of it. Kat, we have had some incredible conversations over the last few episodes. We've been looking at the history of sexually transmitted diseases. We've been looking at the Palermo catacombs.

We've been looking at Dr. Khan. What else did we do? Dysection in Burkine Hair. The history of dissection and Burkine. these histories are something that you live with because you work with this on a daily basis. You are so good at communicating them. If you're ever in Edinburgh, Katz Off and giving talks and you can go to Surgeons Hall Museum and you can hear about them there and in other places too.

The books coming out in spring 2028. So there's loads of ways in which you are communicating these histories and really effectively and brilliantly and that's why I am such a fan of your work because it's just so great. But what do you think these types of histories teach us about? Because technically you're not a historian. You deal with this type of history. Yeah. But there is a real lesson to be learned about from these histories.

And what do you think that is? What do you think these types of histories tell us about human nature, about human kind, about where we've been, where we're going? What's the message? I think the thing is that we're all going. through some awful shit, you know, it's, we, that there have been so many things in history that you just look at and go, dear God, how did people live through this? But we're here now, you know, and we, you know, we're still going through. Some of these are so recent, you know,

like, as we said about, you know, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. It's, it's living memory. This is, this is so close to us. And I think, you know, and I think this is particularly pertinent with the way the world's going now, that we have to constantly keep this in mind to make sure that we're not going back to doing that kind of just awful stuff. There is this idea, isn't there? And it is insidious

more and more now of the good old days. Yeah. And that there was a time when, if we go back to that time, things will be simpler, things will be easier. But those times never existed. And the fabrication of the idea that these things, that these time periods were simpler means that certain communities, or 51% of the population if you're a woman, is marginalised yet again because that's what was happening in these good old days. Or that LGBTQIA plus rights are being eroded because that's what was happening in these good old days.

So it's really a question of who the days were good for. Yeah. It's a very limited number of people that the days were good for. And even, you know, even the wealthy weren't escaping things like, you know, the venereal diseases. Burning willies. Things like that. You know, Boswell was not a member of the less privileged class. So, yeah, I think we have a lot of medicine to be grateful for.

Absolutely. And it's that idea, isn't it, that there's this man in the White House's health secretary at the moment who is spouting. and sometimes people get really annoyed at us for talking about this, you know, about like current day things, which I always go, well, then you don't understand what history is. If you take issue and unbridge with historians talking about global politics or geopolitical issues that are happening today, then you really and truly don't understand what history is about at all. And maybe it's not us that should be quiet, but somebody else is. But we have a man who's the health secretary in the United States who is a pseudo-scientific conspiracy theorist. And actually, that's why these histories are really fucking important. Because when we're allowed to access this information, and this is the work that you do,

then it can enlighten us to how long it's bloody taken us to get here and how we should claw our way into only advancement and not in any way going back, like trying to have sunshine to eradicate certain diseases or not doing this, that and the other. and it's knowledge is power, but we have to allow people. And this is why, again, you're so good at this, is to invite everybody into that knowledge so that it's not just for the really people who have PhDs that's the only way they can grasp it.

No, we all need access to this information and these histories. So thank you for bringing these amazing, amazing, amazing histories to us over the last few weeks. Thank you so much for having me, Anthony. It's been an absolute delight. I loved it so much. And I can't wait until spring, 28. We're in Kat's book, what's it called? Do we have a name? Conversations with the Dead.

Conversations with the Dead is going to be out and in the US. Okay, listen, I have had an amazing month with Kat. We have a new guest co-host lined up for you for next month. You'll get to see who that is in time. If you've enjoyed this episode or the suite of episodes with my brilliant co-host, Kat Irving, then leave us a five-star of you wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us on YouTube because we've got a channel there and some of these episodes and some of our old episodes drop on Mondays

and then new episodes on Thursday. So there's loads of places that you can find us. I'm sure we'll have Kat back again on AfterDard because what would AfterDark be without Cat Irving? But until then, Kat, where can they find you? I am at Anatomical Cat on social media. I see what she did there. That's her name and her job all in one.

I am Anthony Delaney History. You can find me on Instagram only at this point. I'm trying to condense and not have all those different platforms going on. This has been a real treat for me. I'll say thank you once more. And thank you for listening or watching. Until next time, happy listening.