Posted on 07/14/2020 9:30:21 AM PDT by C19fan
As many as one in five Londoners had syphilis by their mid-30s during the late 18th century, according to a detailed new study on the sexually transmitted infection (STI) and its spread in the capital of the United Kingdom.
Researchers used data from hospital admissions and workhouse infirmaries to reach their figures, making allowances for duplicate records, private treatments, and the possibility of syphilis numbers getting mixed in with other diseases like gonorrhea or chlamydia. The findings show a much higher incidence in London than elsewhere in the country at the time – other studies show 'the pox' was half as prevalent in the city of Chester, and up to 25 times less common in rural parts of England and Wales during the late 1700s.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencealert.com ...
Wow, there was lots of VD going around in those days. The spread of VD is hardly a new development.
"Widespread and unchecked until the discovery of penicillin, syphilis was a scourge that accounted for many premature deaths, and several composers are known or strongly believed to have contracted it, including [Robert] Schumann. Other famous [composer] syphilitics were Franz Schubert, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Gaspare Spontini, Gaetano Donizetti, Mikhail Glinka, Bedrich Smetana, Hugo Wolf, Frederick Delius, Edward Macdowell, and Scott Joplin, and their symptoms ranged from lesions and fevers to blindness, deafness, dementia, and death."
http://www.allmusic.com/blog/post/classical-composers-and-their-maladies
Musicians haven’t changed much over the years! :)
No wonder they lost the Revolutionary War!
They had good times for long times.
Well, not so long.
Let’s see.....
Lots of Englishmen going around the world and coming back to London.
Certainly. Add to it that London was the seaport to the world with disease vectors getting on and off each ship.
Two other reasons for wigs were (1) Having an expensive wig displayed conpicious consumption and marked one of status, at the same time forcing the upper classes to spend huge sums for elaborate wigs, siphoned away their money which might otherwise be used for rebellious mischief, like the Fronde in Louie XIV’s time, (2) effective cheap, shampoos were not available until the middle of the 19th Century when German chemists developed them. It was far easier to wear a wig and shave your hair or keep it close cropped to keep your head clean, just as the ancient Egyptians did.
And still, to this day, there has never been a double blind study on the cure of Syphilis. Tell Fauxi to get right on that.
“As many as one in five Londoners had syphilis by their mid-30s”
About the same ratio as women in NYC today...nothing ever changes.
Also putting makeup on to cover the sore outbreaks on the face.
Nobility was engaged in drunkenness, wife-swapping, prostitution was rife. The British mocked the colonists as a bunch of religious bible-thumpers because we were morally strict for the times.
We had a tougher time with the british in the War of 1812, because the nation had more fully embraced Christianity, and it's people weren't as debauched. We were lucky that GB didn't take us back over.
wife-swapping? WHAT?!!!
I was sorta joking but sounds like I was accurate.
And the British sailors brought that shit to Hawaii and infected the Hawaiians. Hawaiian women were the easiest and friendliest on Earth , they were sitting ducks. Zero knowledge about any such matters. And the men did not give a damn .
Glad to see that P. D. Q. Bach is not on the list.
P. D. Q. Bach’s dementia must have been due to something else, then.
Even as early as 1740, the famous fictional villain Robert Lovelace, legendary seducer of women, only went after virgins because he was afraid of getting the pox.
The British mocked the colonists as a bunch of religious bible-thumpers because we were morally strict for the times.
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Isn’t that exactly what the Europeans have claimed Americans are for over a century, “bible-thumpers”.
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