Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Syphilis

Episode Date: March 4, 2015

This week on Sawbones, Dr. Sydnee and Justin talk about the latest hot trends in mercury fumigation as they explore the history of syphilis. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)

Hey folks, just MacRoy here. Listen, just with a warning ahead of time while this week's show will still be free profanities you've come to expect from us. We do get into some adult topics. So if you're listening with the kids, you might want to make sure that they're comfortable with that. I guess I don't know what your relationship is like with your kids. I'd have that whole bird's and the bees talk with them before listening to this episode if I were you. You go ahead and knock that out. Saw bones is a show about medical history. And nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion.

It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright! What's wrong with you? It's about books! One, two, one, two, three, four! Came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's busted out He was gone through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around

Some medicines, some medicines, the escalant macabre for the mouth Wow! Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Bones I'm Erdal Durab, Miss Guy de Medicine I am your co-host Justin McAroy I'm Sydney McAroy Just finishing up in the rest Nature Box lemon almond almond biscotti bites.

More about that later. More on that later. So how are you today, Justin? I'm doing well. It's a nice early morning recording. We shipped the puddle off to your in-laws to get out with. That is what we call our daughter. Yeah, well, they know that.

So we shipped her off to learn and grow and eat some supertatives over there at Mimi and Pop's house and now we're just... I'm ready to hear about some medical history, Sydney. Well, I thought we could take a second to like talk and learn a little more about each other. You know, we don't get to talk. Yeah, I mean... I think when we're recording a podcast, it's a fine time to do that. What did you have in mind as a topic? I don't know know just like to learn more about like your likes and dislikes and like your favorite things

Like I mean, I know like your favorite food is cereal. You're right. Could you eat that a lot? Yeah, but like I don't know other things Like what's what's your favorite poem? Oh? Wow my favorite poem man Oh wow my favorite poem man. I mean I got so excited for memory immediately please. Immediately, a fair poem, fair poem. Ba da ba ba, I'm loving it. That's the McDonald's jingle. Food, folks and fun.

What's that for? Is that a poem? Is that another jingle? My favorite poem. You got nothing to you. Is my favorite poem? I know, read a poem. Write it, my pony. My saddles waiting.

Write it, my pony. I don't think that's appropriate. I think a question in poem. For our podcast. And I mean, I guess, so you're following back on the songs, our poetry kind of thing. For like a jewel, a jewel-esque. I'll be honest, I don't know that much poetry.

I had a couple poetry classes. I wrote, you know, in college, in keeping with law, for sure, with liberal arts degree, I wrote some bad poetry. But I guess I like, I like, I like e.e. Cummings. Okay. Carry your heart with me. Carry it in my heart. That's a good one. Oh, there you go. Okay. Well, that's my favorite poem. What's yours? Well, would you like me to recite it for you? Of course, yeah. Okay, so this is my favorite poem. It's a little, I don't know.

It's not everybody's taste, but you know me. Hit me. Okay. You're gonna recite it for memory. Yes, completely for memory. Okay. Well now you took it off the screen, so now I can't pretend it was I remember. Well, okay.

That was a great trick. You put me on blast for my lack of knowledge about poetry. So I just... So Justin wanted to take it away. So I couldn't see it anymore so that it could be this great trick that it looked like I was...

It was a trick you were trying to play on our audience. And I don't appreciate that. It's an audience trick. Okay. Here we go. Sorry. Yeah. So anyway, from memory.

From memory. There was a young man from Black Bay who thought Cifilus just went away. He believed that a shanker was only a canker that healed in a week in a day. But now he has acne vulgaris, or whatever they call it in Paris, on his skin at his spread from his feet to his head and his friends went to know where his hair is. There's more to his terrible plight, his pupils won't close in the light. His heart is cavorting, his wife is aborting, and he squints through his gun barrel sight. Our thralja cuts into a slumber, his aorta in need of a plumber, but now he has tabies

and sabershen babies while of gummies he has quite a number. What is that about? Well, thank you, Theodore Rosemary. Who wrote that? Lovely syphilis poem. It's about syphilis. It's to remember all the symptoms of syphilis in a poem. Why? Because it's a poem that's not a poem. It's a poem that's not a poem. It's a poem that's not a poem.

It's a poem that's not a poem. It's a poem that's not a poem. It's a poem that's not a poem. It's a poem that's not a poem. It's a poem that's not a poem. It's a poem that's not a poem. It's a poem that's not a poem. It's a poem that's not a poem.

It's a poem that's not a poem. It's a poem that's not a poem. It's a poem that's not a poem. It's a poem that's not a poem. It's a lovely syphilis poem. It's about syphilis. It's to remember all the symptoms of syphilis and poem. Why has syphilis inspired a poem? You know, syphilis has actually inspired quite a few poems throughout the ages. Do you want to know more about syphilis? I'd love to know more about syphilis.

Let's talk about syphilis. A lot of our listeners want us to talk about syphilis? I'd love to know more about syphilis. Let's talk about syphilis. A lot of our listeners want us to talk about syphilis. Yeah, you guys are like hungry for syphilis chat. Which, I mean, that makes me worry. It's really just a skip ahead. It's really easily treatable. Go see a doctor. Don't wait for a podcast. They've got to do this episode.

I'm dying over here. But thank you to some of the people who have suggested it. Ruth, Aaron, Hannah, and Diane, Megan, Patricia, and Holly, and I'm sure many other people have suggested it. But syphilis is an old disease. The first outbreak we know about, the first one that was recorded, and I'll get into kind of, there's a lot more, there's a lot more question as to where it may have started before this, but the first recorded outbreak was in a lot of theoretical syphilis a lot of band name a call it theoretical syphilis I Don't I don't know how many people are gonna want to come see I'm gonna go to you're gonna come to the show anyway because you're supportive and I appreciate that about you Will you sing songs about syphilis? No, there's no

Anyway 1494 some French troops invaded Naples, Italy. And while they were there wreaking havoc, they started plundering the town and unfortunately plundering the citizens. And there was this weird disease that started spreading. I bet it's syphilis. Everybody started getting, and it was pretty apparent, a lot of the time we don't know how things spread.

We talk about on our show that people are like, I don't know, it was a bad smell that spread the plague, something like that. People figured out pretty quickly that syphilis had something to do with sexual contact because of where your symptoms start. And I'll get into describing kind of the course of syphilis, but it was pretty apparent pretty quickly. The course of syphilis is another great title for anything.

So people started getting sick, really sick, started dying because syphilis back then was a little worse than syphilis now. And this is when we first know that syphilis pops up in the historical record. Now, as far as where it came from before that, there's actually a lot of controversy over whether it was a disease that when Columbus visited the Americas that he brought back with him, because I mean, you think about it 1494, 1495 when the first big outbreak happens, not too long after. Do you remember when Columbus sailed the ocean blue? I believe it was 1492.

There you go. I was giving you a clue because it rhymes. Yeah. This is a poetry episode. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. So there's some question.

We think it came from the America's. We have some evidence that would support that. Other people are saying, well, maybe it existed in Europe before. There's some things that Hippocrates even wrote about that sound kind of like syphilis. So maybe it was it was always in Europe. There are some related diseases that we find in Africa. But at the end of the day, our best evidence at this point is that I don't know, was this retribution for the smallpox that Columbus's crew brought over? All's fair and love and war in the Americans. They're very sy Columbus's crew brought over. It's all all-sfar and love and war, neighbor.

They're different. Sorry about that. They say, syphilis back over. See you, you did one too. You did a bad, you see? It may be the tables have turned now. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't.

It doesn't. It doesn't. But, no, it doesn't. You know, we've talked a lot about poetry. The word syphilis actually comes from a poem. That's where we get the name of the disease syphilis. Prior to that, it had lots of other names, but the name syphilis came from a poem written by Jiro Lama Fracastoro, who was an Italian doctor, and I guess poet, or fancier himself,

quite the poet and he wrote a poem about a man who was named syphilis That is unfortunate. That is a rough burden to bear Montfreyr. Sorry about that at the time It wasn't called syphilis. It must have been jized about this poem though. Oh cool. What is it? Oh? Oh excellent Excellent is syphilis. Oh the penis falling off thing this No, no, no, no, that's not what happened. That's why you can't see this. I'll tell you now I will tell you the same thing. I have nothing to offer. Okay So a man named syphilis is Given the disease by Apollo as punishment because there was like a drought and

You know Apollo was the sun god so he was blamed for it and syphilis was like cursing Apollo like I can't believe you brought us this drought and Apollo was like well take this take this you want to curse my name you get this disease which henceforth was known as syphilis yeah before it was called syphilis it depended on where you were in Europe or the world in general as to what you would call it. Can I ask a question on some of this topic? Is VD syphilis? VD actually stands for venereal disease, which could reference any kind of sexually transmitted infection. It's kind of an outdated term. VD is an outdated way of saying STD.

Yes. And actually, more commonly now, and I don't know if this is everybody, but I tend to say STI, sexually transmitted infection. What's the difference between disease and infection? Well, I don't think it's so much the difference between the two as the way that it sounds. I think it's more of a disease sounds worse. Okay. You get a sexually transmitted infection. I know that.

A sexually transmitted disease sounds, I mean, it gets a different. I know that when I catch chlamydia, all I can think is, I just wish this was frame better from a linguistic point of view. That would really help this bitter pill get out when it was neither.

And it's also not something that you necessarily have forever. There are sexually transmitted infections that become chronic diseases, but then there are things like gonorrhea and chlamydia, which just go away. When you're treated and you're treated. Let's just call them pumpkin pie high five. If we're going to like, sure, that's a cool, that's, hey, good news. You got to pumpkin pie high five. Kids wear a condom.

Don't get a pumpkin pie high five. Yeah. Like if we're just like, never going to work, it's never going to work. They're all going to want that's never gonna work. It's never gonna work. They're all gonna want that. We're fired. For whatever the Zouette Jerry job is. So let's talk about what they call syphilis. So if you were in Germany,

you would have called, especially in the early 1500s, you would have called syphilis the French disease. Nice. If you were in France, you would call it the Italian disease. If you were in Holland, you called it the Spanish disease. In Russia, you called it the Polish disease. In Turkey, it was the Christian disease. And in Tahiti, it was the British disease.

Oh my gosh. It was the best. I think there were some other countries thrown in from time to time to the blame. But generally, it was probably whatever colonists showed up, and then you got it, you were like, well, it's probably their fault. They did it. It was also, we've talked a lot about smallpox.

This was also known as the Great Pox, because there are some, like, I don't, they're not exactly pox-like lesions, but a rash that happens in the second stage of syphilis, and they wanted to make sure that we were clarifying the difference between this and small pox. So it was called the Great Pox. It was also called Cupid's Disease, which I think you could piece together while I.

And I thought this was interesting. There was a name for the ulcers that it caused among British soldiers stationed in Portugal. They called it the Black Lion. Whoa. It sounds like a devil. Yeah. And in Scotland, they called it Grand black lion. Whoa. It sounds like a devil. It's heavy. Yeah. And in Scotland, they called it Grand Gore.

Grand Gore. Grand Gore, which I like that name, because it's very gory. So initially, syphilis start spreading in Naples, and then it just takes off all over Europe. And anywhere that European explorers are going, they carry syphilis along with them and spread it to the populace there. And like I said, it was record by the 1520s, it was well established that this was sexually transmitted. And so there were attempts already

to stop it, you know, even not knowing what it is or, you know, anything about the organism that spreads it. There were attempts to stop it by closing down brothels, closing down public bathhouses, or specifically saying, well, we can have a bathhouse, but only for men here and only for women here, like, no mixed bathhouses. They tried to regulate prostitution, not stop it. Just regulate it. Just like, try to figure out if there were certain prostitutes that were, this would be hard to do with the time I would think like who may be carrying syphilis without any test for syphilis that would have been very hard yeah and then you know try to stop them from being prostitutes

for many it was seen as a punishment for sin okay the holy Roman emperor Max million the first said that you know this was this was God's punishment because we've all been bad people and that this is just going to happen and everybody deal with it. And so there were some people who said, you know, whoever has syphilis, we should just kind of let them let them go die because this is what God is doing. That's a little lunch. Punish them. So there were some people who made no efforts whatsoever to treat or suppress syphilis

with a thought that as long as they were a good kind of moral person. So there were some people who made no efforts whatsoever to treat or suppress syphilis with a thought that as long as they were a good, kind of moral person, it wouldn't get it. That's a bummer. It had a lot of effect on history, and we've talked about this with other diseases. The fashions of the time were altered because women started wearing a lot more makeup to hide the skin lesions, big thick kick-d on makeup and things, because it kind of marked you. Very much, there were distinctive lesions that syphilis causes on the skin, and if you had them, then it wasn't just, you know, like smallpox, it was, oh no, you got smallpox, I feel so bad for you. This was, oh, you're

one of those people. You got syphilis. And it is also actually, I saw this mentioned a couple places. It played a role in the history of the church because if you were a member specifically of the Catholic church and you were supposed to be celibate. But then you had some disfigurements or lesions that were obviously from syphilis, then it began to question the absolute holiness of some of the more prominent church figures from town to town.

So, and when we read, and I'm kind of already alluding to this, when you read the original descriptions of syphilis, it's really horrific. They talk about giant abscesses who like these giant ulcers that then turn into like these pockets of pus that eat away at your your skin and specifically on your face and into your bones, your nose would be completely destroyed by syphilis. We talked about this on the plastic surgery episode that it specifically attacks the the skin and the cartilage of your nose. So people would just basically not have a nose by the end and you their skin would fall off. It was a really disfiguring, horrific, fatal disease. This is not the course of syphilis now.

This is not the way that we get syphilis now. So what do you think that that is? You think that's just like trading it repeatedly and are he's at a completely different disease? Or... No, it's not completely different. I think it's just changed over time. And then also this was a population where there was zero immunity

So it just ravaged them, you know now we have a lot more people who have either had syphilis or been exposed to syphilis or We do well, we don't know but we did as time went on and so the disease changed course and then it mutates and Now well now we don't I shouldn't say now.'s it. The world is much different than I thought it was. Between 1494 and now, a lot more people got syphilis. Got it. So at one point it was like a fifth of the world was infected with syphilis. Sydney, what does syphilis do? Exactly.

Okay, so nowadays if you were to get syphilis, this would be the course of your illness. you were to get syphilis, this would be the course of your illness. First you get a shanker, which is an ulcer. It's painless if you can believe that, but it's just a single ulcer and it's somewhere in your, you know, your... Genitalia? Your private. You can use granopathy here. Your bathing suit.

Your bathing suit area. Your bathing suit area. Your bathing suit area. And you just get one and it's there for quite a while, like four to six weeks. And then it goes away. So a lot of people and some people don't have this. So this is why syphilis has missed a lot is because you have just this one thing and then it goes away on its own and it didn't hurt. And then you're fine. Or you didn't get it at all.

You didn't have that first shanker. Secondary syphilis comes later. At this point, you get the rash that people were talking about a lot more when you read these old writings. Some of it is just red bumps on your groin, your hands, your feet. You can also get these raised plaques. Do you know what I'm'm showing them saying race plaque? Like large flat area of skin that's raised. Okay. It's called condoloma lotta, but anyway, the point is they were these big skin, obvious skin lesions,

big giant, not just little red dot. I love you very much. You gave me my daughter and I do very much appreciate that. If I could just ask for myself and probably a good proportion of listeners, if you could just like sort of speed this section up a little bit, we're really lingering on all the shankers and oozing. If we could just kind of like beep, beep, beep, beep,

kind of hit these a little quicker for me. Okay, I just think this is the interesting part. Okay. And go. Okay, so after two to is the interesting part. Okay. And go. Okay, so after two to six weeks, this goes away. And you may have a couple different courses of secondary syphilis. You may have a couple different times where you get the rash and then it goes away. Then there's tertiary syphilis.

This can happen anywhere from two years to 20 years after your initial infection. So this is a long term thing and this is for people who aren't treated. It can involve neurological symptoms. You can get dementia from it. You can get meningitis. You can get these destructive lesions all over your body and in your organs called gummies. You can get an aneurysm of urea orda. There's all kinds of problems.

Yeah, arthritis is an arthral just. Anyway, you can get really sick in tertiary syphilis. That's what, in that poem, when they talk about, he thinks he's the queen of the May, it's somebody that would get dimension, maybe even go what we would have thought of back at the time as crazy because of syphilis. You can see that with neuro syphilis at the end, people who are very altered as a result. There's also, it's important to note, there's the syndrome of congenital syphilis.

So syphilis, especially in the secondary stage, can be passed on to the fetus. So if a woman has syphilis, washies pregnant, and there's use to be, especially in the 1500s, a huge, huge problem, and babies can be born with all kinds of deformities and internal organ diseases. So with all the different ways that this can present, it seems like it would become a barrier to diagnose. How did that, how did they do it? It absolutely was, and I'm going to tell you about that, but before we do that, why don't

you head on down with me to the billing department? Let's go. So, how do we diagnose syphilis? So there was a lot of things. For a 10 that I paused an appropriate amount of time between dinner chat and syphilis chat, just unless I added it in like 10 seconds or something. Is there an appropriate amount of food?

There is no appropriate amount. Imagine there was some music. Let me try again. Do do do do do do do do. Bar. That's the music that you get after dinner and before syphilis. That music has never led anyone from dinner to the activities that necessitate, you know, how do we diagnose syphilis? Smartle. I'm going to eat my lemon almond biscotti by it. So you tell me how to diagnose

syphilis. The crunch in the microphone. So there was a lot of confusion for a while about whether syphilis was its own disease or if it was part of gonorrhea. And I think we talked about this as well because remember there was the one doctor who in order to prove, we talked about this in the self diagnosis section.

So in order to prove that syphilis and gonorrhea were different of the same, he didn't know. He took pus from a syphilis and gonorrhea were different of the same. He didn't know. He took pus from a syphilis sore and he injected it into his own penis. That's such a cool dude. And then he got syphilis and gonorrhea because the person he got it from had syphilis and gonorrhea. And anyway, so as a result, there was a lot of confusion for a long time. So people thought that you got gonorrhea first and then later on it would become

syphilis. So it took many years for us to figure out that no while they are both transmitted in the same fashion, these are definitely different diseases and it wasn't until like 1838 that we actually figured this out. The doctor who wrote- Whoa! Dr. Who is involved? Dr. Who? No! Don't bring Dr. Who into this syphilis conversation. Don't stop spreading vicious rumors. That's, well, that would make a lot more sense, though. How did syphilis get everywhere? Yeah.

All throughout history and space and the earth. Think about it. There was a somewhat funny image going around back, I mean, sort of gallows humor, but back during the, when the Ebola outbreak was, when we were treating it, doctors here for Ebola, there was a screen capture from Fox News or CNN or something, and at the bottom it said, a doctor who brought Ebola back from Africa. And a bunch of people were sharing that like, no, how could he? Why would he do this to us?

He's supposed to be a good guy. He's a hard game. So the doctor who established it was Dr. Philippe record. And he was the first one to describe the three stages of syphilis and to note that this is a distinct disease. And at the time, it was still a clinical diagnosis. So you just kind of looked for these three stages and go,

oh, okay, you probably have syphilis. The reward for being the first one to formally describe syphilis as its own disease is that the initial shanker foreverforth became known as record shanker. Wow, what an honor. So I don't know that in retrospect, he probably wishes he hadn't figured that out. I think this is interesting.

And anyone who is listening, who's like in medical school or who is a doctor who's ever studied any of this stuff is going to like this too. He worked under Dr. Dupetren, who has a contracture name for him, Dupetren's contracture. And his protege was Dr. Fornier of gangrene fame. Fornier is gangrene. so which is a gangrene of the scrotum. I would literally rather listen to you describe symptoms of syphilis. Okay.

Well anyway, I thought it was cool. We know a lot more about syphilis and like the course of the illness as far as what happens if you don't do anything to try to treat it from stage to stage because of a really horrible study that was done and a lot of people have heard of this before the Tuskegee study. So between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service did a study in Tuskegee, Alabama where basically they recruited rural African American men and tested them to see if they had syphilis and then didn't really do anything. They would bring them in periodically and tell them that they were taking care of them, that they were getting free medical care, but they didn't actually do anything to alter

the course of their illness. They didn't treat them in any way. They didn't even tell them that they had syphilis. So the participants that came in that were positive for syphilis, they never let them know. And initially in 1932, when this was started, we didn't have a great treatment, but in the 40s, when penicillin was introduced, we did. We had an excellent treatment for Cifilis, and they still didn't offer this to any of the participants, or even tell them that they needed it.

They even, men who were registering for the draft during World War II were tested for syphilis and found positive, the US Public Health Service attempted to intervene in these cases so that the military would not tell them that they were positive so that they wouldn't then get treatment through the military. So they actively kept people from getting treated. So it was a really horrible dark period, I think, in our history. And a lot of men died from syphilis and and their wives got syphilis, and some of their children were born with congenital syphilis.

That's where, unfortunately, a lot of information as to what happens when you don't treat syphilis comes from this really, really awful study. Anyway, what treatments have we used over time for syphilis? Initially, we tried a lot of herbal treatments as we did with everything. Sure. Wild, yes. Wild pansy, something called guayakum or holywood, which guayak is also used to test stool for blood. I didn't know that's where that came from. It's like an herb that we used for that. This was not very effective, but this, you know,

we didn't know, we put it on wounds and hope they got better. Mercury was the biggest treatment historically for syphilis. You could take it any way you wanted to. You could eat it, you could inject it directly at the site. If you were so inclined, there were a lot of saves, like topical applications, like take this cream and rub it all over your syphilis

Or a lot of people like to kind of be fumigated with mercury so like you would sit in a box Well a lot of people like to be fumigated with mercury Sit back then they did okay To an odd phrasing sorry, you know what I'd like What I'd like is to be fumigated with mercury. If you had syphilis, you probably would, because you didn't know what else to do. Daniel, we don't have time to be fumigated with Mercury. We only have the afternoon, but Rebecca,

I'd really like to be fumigated with Mercury. Sydney says I'd like to be fumigated with Mercury. If you had syphilis Anyway So you would sit in a box no crazy sleeping the nation people liking Be fumigated with mercury not be required to or have it do they don't like it says modern day doc Are you good with your syphilis jokes? Mercury jokes are you happy now? Okay, I'd like to move on Are you good with your simple shacks? Mercury checks? Are you happy now? Yeah. Okay.

I'd like to move on. So let me know. I'll keep educating you. No, it's right. When you're ever wondering about it. Do you want to be in the public? I got these little bit biscotti bites. I'm good.

So anyway, you would sit in a box with your head sticking out of it. And then they would put some mercury in it and then heat it underneath. So like the idea was that you would kind of absorb the mercury gas. Does it actually- Does it actually- Does the mercury have a low temperature at which it changes to a gas?

Like just like it is, you know how it has a low temperature at which it changes from- No, it's a liquid most of the time. Like the boiling point is low, I'm wondering, what is this we're asking? You know, I don't know the temperature that it becomes a gas, but I do know that this is one of the most ineffective ways to deliver mercury Mm-hmm. It's through the gas form

So I don't know if that's because it doesn't become a gas or because it just isn't absorbed that way I'm sure somebody is is looking to suffer right now You would usually if you were gonna use it you would usually just sit in a hot room near a fire and then rub mercury on your skin several times a day And then sometimes you would put some arsen mercury on your skin several times a day. And then sometimes you would put some arsenic on your skin too with the mercury just to really, really get it in there. There were also drinks that were sold. There were chocolate drinks that were sold by street vendors that were laced with mercury.

And the idea behind this specifically was so that a man could buy them and give them to his wife and children. That's not good. Without them knowing. That's not a good thing to do. What he was doing. So you could treat your wife for syphilis by saying, hey, the honey, I have this lovely chocolate beverage for you. So.

So basically, anytime you try to give me anything with chocolate and then I'm going to now want to give me a little suspicious. This led to the phrase, a night with Venus and a lifetime with mercury. Preclover. Yeah. Malaria was used to treat syphilis briefly. The idea was that, and this was a common therapy that if you could induce a high fever, you could kill some sort of disease that a person had, malaria was just, it induced really high

fevers and so that it was used. And especially after we had quinine to cure malaria, it was thought, well, this is an acceptable risk then, because we can just give you syphilis and, or you have syphilis and we'll give you malaria and then you'll get better. So, if you didn't want to do that, you could just sit in a steam room, which seems a little better to me. There were surgeries we already talked about that could reconstruct your nose, and again, we mentioned this in the plastic surgery episode, but this involved like sowing your arm to

your face so that it still had the blood supply from your arm, the skin from your arm, and then you would leave it there until it kind of attached to your face, and then disconnect it, that would be weeks. And then there was a great treatment that came out in 1908 called Salversan. This was actually the first thing that really did treat syphilis well, not that it was a perfect treatment by any stretch.

It was also known as 606, which I think is very ominous. Yeah, that's threatening, I think. But that was just because it was the sixth in a series of six collections of compounds that were tested or something. Like, formula 409. Sort of like that, yeah. Yeah. And this was, we found this just a few years after we finally isolated the cause of syphilis.

bacteria called a spyrachete, called trepidema pallidum. We had just figured that out. We started using salver sand, which was an organo arsenic compound, which means it's got arsenic in it. It did definitely kill the spire ketes. It had been thoroughly tested on rabbits, if that makes you feel better. And you had to take a series of many injections, and it had a lot of toxic side effects, including liver damage, rashes, nausea, vomiting, and maybe you would die. Oh, man.

So, not an ideal treatment. Nope. And then in 1943, the world changed because we had penicillin. Yay, penicillin. And this is the beginning of the end of a lot of infectious disease stories. Yeah. Because then we had antibiotics. So, in 1943, penicillin hits the screen and everybody starts using that for syphilis. And it is still to this day the best cure for syphilis.

That's what we would give you if you came into the office today, would give you an injection of penicillin. So, lots of famous people had syphilis, by the way. Oh, yeah. Keats did, to loose lettre track, Manet, Alcapone. It's theorized that people like Napoleon and maybe Van Gogh maybe Hitler had syphilis. So syphilis was probably another of these diseases

that had a lot more effect on the course of human history than we give it credit for. Thank you to the taxpayers for letting us use their song Medicines at the intro and outro of our program. We have a Facebook page search solvents on Facebook. There's a lot of people there discussing episodes. You can also find the page for maximumfund.org, which is our podcast network.

In fact, there was a like third, did you see this like 30 response thread on the maximumfund.org Facebook page about what the guy guy saying at the beginning of our theme song. This song is about the books, whatever he is saying there. That seems to be the prevailing wisdom right now as this song is about some books. But because apparently the song, Medicines, if you listen to lyrics, it's about people who turn into books.

No, I don't like to track that out. I like to track that out. That was about medicine. It's about everything. But thank you to them. Maximumfund.org is a podcast network, we are a part of it, along with other shows like The Adventure Zone, which is a D&D podcast that I do with my brothers and my dad.

Bunker Buddies is a new one that my brother Travis does with his friend Andy and the two of them talk about how you can survive certain disaster scenarios But it's a comedy show you can also check out my brother my brother and me We're Justin and his brothers attempt to give you bad advice Well, we successfully give bad advice Well, that's sure you attempt to give advice and it's bad. It's succeed in giving bad advice. You can check out all those shows plus many, many more at maximumfun.org.

I think that's going to do it for a Sid. We're on Twitter at Salbo. She's at Sidney McRoy, S-Y-D-N-E-E-M-C-E-L-R-O-Y. And he's at Justin McRoy, which is easier to spell. Until next Tuesday or Wednesday, whichever comes first, I'm Justin Macrioi. I'm Sydney Macrioi. So he's don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! Maximumfund.org

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