I wonder how he could have a case of syphilis that was left untreated for this length of time? Just doesn’t seem likely.
Syphilis is a nasty disease, but it is usually curable. Also, one would think that if he had syphilis for this long one or more of his victims would have been infected. I’ve not seen any of the ones that have come forward make that claim.
Many years ago my stepmother worked for a very good dermatologist. A young woman came in with some sort of skin issue and he pegged it as syphilis right off. Poor girl was pretty straight laced and it turned out her boyfriend was not. She was mortified.
Syphilis is treatable with antibiotics, and then “cured” but it can go a long time in someone not recognizing or it not being evident as an infection, and the damage it has already done, cannot be reversed. One of many ways it can can be expressed is as damage to heart muscles and vessels, mimicking other cardiac infections that cause cardiomyopathy (muscle death) and leads to heart failure (compounding existing coronary lesions and low oxygen tissue damage from genetics and lifestyle of diet, booze etc, needing bypass or a stent) It goes dormant for long periods of time and pops up again, in similar fashion to virus (virions) such as those that remain on the spinal cord (after chicken pox) and show up infecting entire dermatomes of nerves right out to the nerve endings (and the nerves become numb after it has run its course, and there is constant potential for post-herpetic pain- shingles being a herpes like virus). You are right— it is nasty— but the key is the damage already caused when “hidden” or undiagnosed. Agree- seems like his victims would have caught it— but then, he made them and then dumped them. Not an expert in this— but the neurosyphilis is what they were specific about, and am reading up on it. It could very well be cancer, brought on by another STD maybe papillomavirus—which again he would pass on except his “oral” fixation. Like one of the old roman emperors, debauched and rotting away.