Posted on 12/15/2004 3:57:35 PM PST by ZGuy
Watch Six Foot Under on HBO or other programs on t.v. who are trying to promote homosexual behavior as an everyday thing. They have an agenda. They want people to think they are o.k. and not sick. When something is wrong it smells, many of us know automatically it is wrong for us.
Wrong lifestyles will never be Right lifestyles even if numerous people become sick.
Courtesy ping.
Now those are some homosexual threads!
You called?
Smith's article appeared before the book was published.
From an afterword to the book itself by Alice Fennessey, Ph.D.:
"As his [nc - Tripp's] friend, I can attest that the point of this book is not to make the case that Lincoln was a homosexual or, in effect, to 'out' him. First, the facts about Lincoln's relationships with men have been widely known for a long time; second, according to the Kinsey criteria which Dr. Tripp uses, Lincoln was definitionally bisexual. Sexuality, like every variable in nature, when measured carefully reflects a bell curve. Lincoln, like every other human being, was at a certain point on that curve. The aim of this book is to define Lincoln's true identity as nearly as possible, not merely on a sexual curve, but as a whole man. Obscuring any part of his personality creates a barrier to this understanding."
Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Volume 23, Number 1, Winter 2002
C.A. Tripp, "The Strange Case Of Isaac Cogdal"
DR. C.A. TRIPP REFERENCED BY LINCOLN SCHOLARS AND HISTORIANS
Source: David Herbert Donald, We Are Lincoln Men, 2003, p. 22-23.
The statement [of Isaac Cogdal regarding Ann Rutledge and Lincoln] has remained a linchpin in accounts endorsing the Ann Rutledge story, even though Professor Randall cautioned that it had "unLincolnian quality." Recently it has come under more sustained attack from C.A. Tripp, who questions the timing and the accuracy of Cogdal's reported interview with Lincoln. In a careful computer-aided analysis of all of Lincoln's known writings and sayings, Dr. Tripp shows that Lincoln never used several key words Cogdal attributed to him, or adopted the pattern of phrasing Cogdal reported, and concludes that Cogdal's "entire testimony reeks of fraud."
Source: David Herbert Donald, We Are Lincoln Men, 2003, p. 140-141.
On November 16, 1862, Virginia Woodbury Fox recorded a delicious piece of gossip in her diary. "Tish," she reported -- referring to her friend, Leticia McKean, a Washington socialite -- told her: "There is a Bucktain soldier here devoted to the President, drives with him, and when Mrs. L. is not home, sleeps with him." "What stuff!" Mrs. Fox appraised the rumor.This item was brought to my attention by Professor Ari Hoogenboom, who was preparing a biography of Virginia Fox's husband, Gustavus Vasa Fox, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. I tucked away his letter in the voluminous files I was collecting for my Lincoln biography but passed along copies to several Lincoln specialists. Matthew Pinsker, who was writing a history of the Soldiers' Home, just outside Washington, identified the soldier in question as David V. Derickson of the 150th Pennsylvania Volunteers, known as the "Bucktails" because of the insignia they attached to their uniforms, and the indefatigable C.A. Tripp looked into the story with a view to adding another chapter to his history of Lincoln's sexual life.
They both discovered that there was a little more to the story than Mrs. Fox's unsubstantiated second-hand report. ...
Source: David Herbert Donald, We Are Lincoln Men, 2003, p. 243, Notes to Chapter 5, note 2.
For Lincoln's friendship with Captain Derickson, I have relied heavily on two unpublished manuscripts kindly given to me by their authors: Matt Pinsker, "Lincoln's Wartime Retreat" (first draft, 2001), and C.A. Tripp, "What Stuff!" (a chapter for his projected history of Lincoln's sexuality). Dr. Tripp, with his usual generosity, also gave me a copy of Derickson's "Recollections of Lincoln," from the Centennial Edition of the Meadville (Pa.) Tribune Republican, May 12, 1888. Neither Dr. Pinsker nor Dr. Tripp is responsible for my interpretation of this relationship.
Source: Michael Burlingame, Professor Emeritus, Connecticut College, A Respectful Dissent, a dissenting afterword to Dr. Tripp's book at pp. 225-238. Quoting from page 225.
In the interest of full disclosure I should state that I new and liked Dr. Tripp, who several years ago very generously gave me a copy of his remarkable Lincoln database in return for a digital copy of my book, The Inner World of Lincoln. At that time I was using An Apple computer, which could not read the disk containing that database; Dr. Tripp kindly lent me an IBM machine, which I picked up at his home in Nyack. I think fondly of Dr. Tripp whenever I consult that database, which is virtually every day as I work on my multivolume biography of Lincoln. We spoke on the phone occasionally, discussing various aspects of Lincoln's life and respectfully disagreed on many subjects.
Source: Michael B. Chesson, Department of History, University of Massachusetts, Boston, An Enthusiastic Endorsement, a concurring afterword to Dr. Tripp's book, at pp. 238-246. Quoting from page 239, 245.
Donald has said that "the subject deserves careful and cautious consideration." That is wise advice from a meticulous scholar, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the finest life of Lincoln. What to make of Tripp's evidence, arguments, and conclusions? As scholars, we are called on to follow the truth wherever it may lead, even if we find that a president had a child by a slave woman or oral sex with an intern. Yet professional historians, particularly the lords of the Lincoln establishment, have advanced with less than deliberate speed, and often obfuscation -- if not howls of rage and denial -- at the merest suggestion that their hero and mine might have been anything less than a robust, masculine, "normal," exclusively hertersexual American male in the mainstream off ninteenth-century American culture, as found in the northern states, specifically the Indiana and illinois frontier. Their unspoken credo is "don't ask, don't tell, dont pursue." The truth, that is, whatever it may be. All agree that Lincoln wasrobust. He was certainly masculine, meaning that he was a man's man, attracted to other men, as they were certainly drawn to him. He was also a freak, a very odd-looking human, as William H. Herndon, who knew him best, and others who knew him well, have testified. But that Lincoln was "normal" in almost any sense or meaning of that much abused word will not bear even the most casual scrutiny. Tripp has demonstrated, at the very least, that in his orientaton Lincoln was not exclusively heterosexual. (p. 239)-----
Tripp, for all his research, sophistication, and insight, has not proved his case conclusively. There is no smoking gun that we can link to Long Abe. Unlike the exposers of Jefferson, Tripp could not call upon DNA evidence or other scientific proof, though Lincoln's bond fragments at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology await analysis, which might reveal the presence of the Marfan syndrome (unlikely) or venereal disease (possible). Unless some scholar finds previously unknown love letters by Lincoln or another man, or a diary kept by someone like Speed, this case will never be proven to the satisfaction of the Union army of Lincoln idolaters and homophobes everywhere. (p. 245)
Nor, perhaps, has Tripp oroven his case even beyond a reasonable doubt. But any open-minded reader who has reached this point may well have a reasonable doubt about the nature of Lincoln's sexuality. (p. 245)
Source: Tom Schwartz, Illinois State Historian
Over the years, a number of writers and scholars have argued that Abraham Lincoln was a homosexual. Tripp, however, objected to the evidence presented by early writers, finding it unconvincing. Tripp's goal was to collect as much information as he could on Lincoln nd explore the sixteenth president's sexuality in all its dimensions and complexity. There is much in this book that is provocative and much more that is worthwhile.
Source: Matthew Pinsker, Lincoln's Sanctuary, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 215, note 38.
Diary entry, November 16, 1862, Virginia Woodbury Fox in Levi Woodbury Papers, container 1, reel 1 (1862), Library of Congress. Dr. C. A. Tripp and journalist Philip Nobile deserve credit for helping to bring this entry to my attention.
NY Times.com, December 16, 2004, Dinitia Smith
In researching Lincoln, Mr. Tripp created a vast database of cross-indexed material, now available at the Lincoln Library in Springfield, Ill.
Month by month in stacks and bundles of fact and legend, I found invisible companionships that surprised me. Perhaps a few of these presences lurk and murmur in this book. (Sandburg at xii)Joshua Speed was a deep-chested man of large sockets, with broad measurement between the ears. A streak of lavender ran through him; he had spots soft as May violets. And he and Abraham Lincoln told each other their secrets about women. Lincoln too had tough physical shanks and large sockets, also a streak of lavender, and spots soft as May violets. (Sandburg at 264)
Their births, the loins and tissues of their fathers and mothers, accident, fate, providence, had given these two men streaks of lavender, spots soft as May violets. (Sandburg at 266)
Source: David Herbert Donald We Are Lincoln Men, 2003, p. 36
... no one ever suggested that {Lincoln] and Speed were sexual partners. In these still primitive, almost frontier, days in Illinois, it was anything but uncommon for two or more men to share a bed.
Source: David Herbert Donald We Are Lincoln Men, 2003, pp. 145-6
The President developed what Aristotle would call an enjoyable friendship with Derickson, who was an amiable, undemanding companion. ... Suffering from insomnia, Lincoln sometimes talked with Derickson until late into the night. I think it is hardly surprising that he may on occasion have asked the congenial captain to share his bed; in those days, it was not unusual for men to sleep together.
And so we know that in the primitive, almost frontier, days in Illinois, it was not uncommon for an attorney and member of the Illinois State House of Representatives to share his bed with another man for four years in the state capital. What is disturbing is that we only read about attorney and representative Lincoln and not all the other lawyers and representatives who bedded down for four years with another man in the state capital.
What is truly disturbing about the bedtime stories of Lincoln and Captain David Derickson is that, as we are assured by the Lincolnistas, it was simply common practice for the President of the United States to have an Army officer in his bed. What is truly disgusting is the manner in which they only talk about the Army officer in Lincoln's bed. We know it was common practice, and that they all did it, but we never read about the Army officer in the bed of Washington, or Adams, or Jefferson, or Madison, or Monroe. There is an obvious bias in the reporting.
Source: W. Scott Thompson, Log Cabin Republican leader, Reagan appointee to the United States Institute of Peace, professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.
In his early thirties, before either he or his love-object Joshua Speed married, they lived together in cramped circumstances over four full years; not to put too fine a point on it, "the young men slept in the same bed every night," according to a very straight and conventional source. [1] Perhaps we are meant to accept this habit precisely for its openness--since it is not covered up--as necessitated by frontier privation rather than erotic preference: an inference more in the category of the anxious denial of the historian rather than the compelling illogic of the evidence--a memorable avoidance indeed, since it does not even pass the straight-face test.[1] Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (1982), p. 284.
Source: W. Scott Thompson, Log Cabin Republican leader, Reagan appointee to the United States Institute of Peace, professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.
In "Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years" (1926), Carl Sandberg wrote that their relationship had "a streak of lavender and spots soft as May violets," which some have taken as a veiled reference to homosexuality. In 1995, just after Bob Dole rejected campaign contributions from the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group, Log Cabin member W. Scott Thompson was quoted in the New York Times as saying that gays should feel welcome in the party, "given that the founder was gay." Indeed, Abe has been called the original Log Cabin Republican.
Source: Gabor Boritt, The Lincoln Enigma, 2001, p. xv. Gabor S. Boritt is Robert C. Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies and Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College.
David Herbert Donald, the author of the Lincoln Prize-winning, best-selling biography, Lincoln (1995), found during his book tour the question, "was Lincoln gay," the most commonly asked. I myself have been queried about his sexual orientation, from as far away as ABC of Australia.
Source: Gabor Boritt, The Lincoln Enigma, 2001, p. xv. Gabor S. Boritt is Robert C. Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies and Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College.
Captain [David V.] Derickson, in particular, advanced so far in the President's confidence and esteem that, in Mrs. Lincoln's absence, he frequently spent the night at his cottage, sleeping in the same bed with him, and-it is said-making use of His excellency's night-shirts! Thus began an intimacy which continued unbroken until the following spring....
Source: Matthew Pinsker, Lincoln's Sanctuary, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 84 (sourced to Chamberlin, One Hundred and Fiftieth Regiment, 40-41.)
Major Chamberlin recalled: In November 1862, Lincoln wrote that "Captain Derrickson [sic]... and his Company are very agreeable to me; and while it is deemed proper for any guard to remain, none would be more satisfactory to me than Cpt. D and his company." So it was to be, the Company remained the presidential guard until the end of the war, but its Captain was appointed provost marshall in Pennsylvania the following spring.
Source: Matthew Pinsker, Lincoln's Sanctuary, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 85 (Endnotes from p. 215)
The available contemporary evidence fully supports these recollections of a special relationship. As noted earlier, the president had brought Derickson on the four-day trip to Antietam, a fact reported in the newspapers of the day and captured in photographs. [34] Lincoln himself also penned a note during this period indicating his appreciation for his new friend and a desire to keep him nearby. Captain Derickson and the other members of the Bucktail unit, the president wrote on November 1, 1862, "are very agreeable to me; and while it is deemed proper for any guard to remain, none would be more satisfactory to me than Capt. D and his company." [35] What brought on the president's testimonial, according to Willard Cutter, was the arrival on October 31 of another unit from the Army of the Potomac apparently sent to relieve Company K. The nervous private, who shared a meal with some of the new arrivals, called them "a hard looking lot." [36] It appears that the next morning Derickson subsequently secured a letter from the president to protect his unit's status as the "President's Military Guard," a proud caption he had ordered inscribed on special company stationery. [37]Naturally, the appearance of a new figure around the president generated talk in Washington. Virginia Fox, the wife of the assistant secretary of Navy, noted in her diary in the middle of November that a friend had informed her that "there is a Bucktail Soldier here devoted to the President, drives with him & when Mrs L. is not home, sleeps with him." Surprised, Fox could only exclaim, "What stuff!" [38]
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[34] New York Herald, October 5, 1862.
[35] Abraham Lincoln to Whom It May Concern, Executive Mansion, November 1, 1862, Collected Works, 5: 484-485.
[36] Willard A. Cutter to George Cutter, November 1,1862, Willard A. Cutter Papers, Allegheny College, Meadville, Pa.
[37] Willard A. Cutter to Elizabeth Cutter, November 1, 1862, Willard A. Cutter Papers, Allegheny College, Meadville, Pa.
[38] Diary entry, November 16, 1862, Virginia Woodbury Fox in Levi Woodbury Papers, container 1, reel 1 (1862), Library of Congress. Dr. C. A. Tripp and journalist Philip Nobile deserve credit for helping to bring this entry to my attention.
Source: Gabor Boritt, The Lincoln Enigma, 2001, p. xv. Gabor S. Boritt is Robert C. Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies and Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College.
In November 1862, Lincoln wrote that "Captain Derrickson [sic]... and his Company are very agreeable to me; and while it is deemed proper for any guard to remain, none would be more satisfactory to me than Cpt. D and his company." So it was to be, the Company remained the presidential guard until the end of the war, but its Captain was appointed provost marshall in Pennsylvania the following spring.
Source: Edward Steers, Jr., Washington Times September 12, 2003, Lincoln finds summers of respite in rural area
Steers reviews Matthew Pinsker, Lincoln's Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers' Home, Oxford University Press, 2003.
Among the more interesting and little-known aspects of Lincoln's life at the home was his relationship with Capt. David Derickson. Described as "the president's favorite new companion," Derickson was captain of Company K of the 150th Pennsylvania Infantry. In September 1862, Companies K and D were detached from the defenses of Washington and sent to guard the president's cottage at the Soldiers' Home. According to Mr. Pinsker, Lincoln often shared his dinner table with Derickson and Capt. Henry Crotzer (of Company D) when Mary Lincoln was away.In addition, Derickson shared a bed with the president, at Lincoln's invitation. The bed-sharing eventually made its way into the regimental history that received little attention until recently. Contemporary views thought little of men sleeping together in the same bed, a common practice of the period.
That an Army captain would share the bed of president of the United States on multiple occasions might seem unusual and hard for some to understand. Mr. Pinsker, however, describes the situation more fully than has been the case, and places it in is proper historical context. Even so, the story will undoubtedly gain prominence now.
Source: PBS, Booknotes.
December 21, 2003
Lincoln's Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers' Home
by Matthew Pinsker
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BRIAN LAMB, HOST: Matthew Pinsker, author of "Lincoln`s Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers` Home,"---
LAMB: So, what`s the Captain Derickson story then?
PINSKER: Well, David Derickson was about 10 years younger than the president and he was the captain of this infantry company, company K of the 150th Pennsylvania. He was from Meadville (ph), he was a businessman, but he was a Republican politician. And he showed up with the company early September, 1862, and the president as a courtesy asked him to ride with him that second morning into the city. And they did.
And as they were riding into the city, they struck up a conversation, and Lincoln felt some sort of, you know, connection to him. They talked politics; they both came from relatively similar backgrounds. And over the next several weeks, he and Derickson became friends. It`s a remarkable story about their friendship. He took Derickson with him on a tour of the battlefield at Antietam, and then later in late October when Mary Lincoln took Tad and went traveling to New England, Lincoln, the president, was alone in the soldier`s home cottage, and according to the soldiers who were there, he invited Derickson to spend a night in the cottage, and according to the soldiers, Derickson slept in the bed with Lincoln at this cottage.
And you can I think from a modern perspective, you know, raise an eyebrow over that, thinking about sexuality. They raised eyebrows back then too, but they didn`t think sexuality at all. Their gossip was about how a president could dare to be such close friends with a captain. And they were -- there were literally gossipers in the city. There was a woman who writes in her diary that a captain was becoming close friends with the president and even riding with him and staying with him in the cottage, and she writes in her diary, what stuff.
Source: Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, by Roy P. Basler.
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865.: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 5.To Whom It May Concern [1]
Executive Mansion,
Whom it may concern Washington, Nov. 1, 1862Capt. Derrickson, with his company, has been, for some time keeping guard at my residence, now at the Soldiers Retreat. He, and his Company are very agreeable to me; and while it is deemed proper for any guard to remain, none would be more satisfactory to me than Capt. D. and his company.
A. LINCOLN
Annotation
[1] ALS-P, ISLA, Captain David V. Derickson of Company K, One Hundred Fiftieth Pennsylvania Volunteers continued to act as presidential bodyguard until he was appointed provost marshal for the Nineteenth District of Pennsylvania on April 27, 1863. His company remained as presidential guard until mustered out in June, 1865.
---------------
Source: PBS, Newshour
Margaret Warner speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Herbert Donald about his book, "We Are Lincoln Men: Abraham Lincoln and His Friends," November 26, 2003
MARGARET WARNER: Now, you've said he did form one friendship that you called a perfect or complete friendship, in his early twenties, Joshua Fry Speed.DAVID HERBERT DONALD: Right. This is unusually late, as a matter of fact, of forming such a perfect friendship, using Aristotle's terminology for that. He met Speed when he, Lincoln, was in his thirties. Speed was younger. Lincoln wanders into the store in Springfield. He wants to set up law practice. He gets the price of a mattress and a blanket and a couple of sheets, and then Speed totals him up at $17, and Lincoln says, "I haven't got $17." He says, "if you can trust me until Christmas, maybe my lawyering experience might allow me to pay you back, but if I can't do it then, I'll never pay you." And Speed saw, this young man didn't want to go into debt, of course. He said, "I've got a big room upstairs with a double bed. If you want to share it, it's all right with me."
Lincoln, without saying a word, picks up his saddlebag, which had his clothes on one side, a couple of law books on the other, goes up the steps. There's a pause there for a moment. You hear kind of a thud on the floor as the saddlebags are dropped. And after a minute Lincoln comes down with that beatific smile-- he had one of the most wonderful smiles we've ever had, it's from ear to ear. "Speed," he said, "I moved." And for the next four years they shared the same room and the same bed.
MARGARET WARNER: Now, that raises an issue that you said you learned on your book tour last time was a big issue to people, about the nature of their relationship.
DAVID HERBERT DONALD: Apparently so. An extraordinary number of people kept asking on the last book tour, "Was Lincoln gay?" And so I felt it necessary to go into this in some detail. I think, with the gay liberation movement has had need for heroes and heroines, and it would be rather nice to have Abraham Lincoln as your poster boy, wouldn't it? There have been some who tried to do that.
There's one in particular, a man who's campaigned along this, and I'm amused and rather proud, I must say, that he has denounced me because I don't accept his views. They say, you know, David Donald can't be believed because he is "a dried-up old Harvard heterosexual prune." (Laughs)
That's the most wonderful compliment anybody could pay to me. But I have tried to go over it very carefully, not merely what the evidence is, but with psychoanalysts and psychologists, and I think we're just about all agreed that Lincoln and Speed did not have a homosexual relationship.
They were obviously fond of each other, they shared a great many things, and they loved each other in the way that Damian and Pytheas and David and Jonathan did. This was, I think, what Aristotle talked about, the perfect friendship.
MARGARET WARNER: Where they really shared things.
DAVID HERBERT DONALD: Oh, they shared everything.
Attributed to NY Times.com, December 16, 2004, Dinitia Smith, Finding Homosexual Threads in Lincoln's Legend
Mr. Tripp charts Lincoln's relationships with other men, including Billy Greene, with whom Lincoln supposedly shared a bed in New Salem, Ill. Herndon said Greene told him that Lincoln's thighs "were as perfect as a human being Could be."-----
Lincoln's fellow lawyer Henry C. Whitney observed once that Lincoln "wooed me to close intimacy and familiarity."
-----
Mr. Donald also takes issue with the conclusion that Lincoln had a sexual relationship with Derickson, his bodyguard at his presidential retreat, the Soldiers' Home, outside Washington. Mr. Tripp writes that their closeness stirred comment in Washington, and cites a diary entry from Nov. 16, 1862, by Virginia Woodbury Fox, wife of Gustavus Fox, assistant secretary of the Navy. She recounted a friend's report: " 'There is a Bucktail soldier here devoted to the president, drives with him, and when Mrs. L. is not home, sleeps with him.' What stuff!" But Mr. Donald writes that "What stuff!" meant she was dismissing the rumor.
-----
Mr. Tripp cites a second description of the relationship in an 1895 history of Derickson's regiment, the 150th Pennsylvania Volunteers, by Thomas Chamberlain, Derickson's commanding officer: "Captain Derickson, in particular, advanced so far in the president's confidence and esteem that, in Mrs. Lincoln's absence, he frequently spent the night at his cottage, sleeping in the same bed with him and -- it is said -- making use of his Excellency's night-shirts! "When Derickson was to be transferred, Lincoln pulled strings to keep him. But Mr. Donald wrote that if their relationship was romantic, they would not have separated so casually when Derickson finally left Washington in 1863.
Despite Mr. Donald's criticism, Mr. Tripp has won supportfrom other scholars. Jean H. Baker, a former student of Mr. Donald's and the author of "Mary Todd Lincoln: a Biography" (W. W Norton, 1987), wrote the introduction to the book. She said that Lincoln's homosexuality would explain his tempestuous relationship with Mary Todd, and "some of her agonies and anxieties over their relationship."
"Some of the tempers emerged because Lincoln was so detached," Ms. Baker said in a telephone interview. "But I previously thought he was detached because he was thinking great things about his court cases, his debates with Douglas. Now I see there is another explanation."
"The length of time when these men continued to sleep in the same bed and didn't have to was sort of an impropriety," Ms. Baker said.
-----
In researching Lincoln, Mr. Tripp created a vast database of cross-indexed material, now available at the Lincoln Library in Springfield, Ill. He began the book working with the writer Philip Nobile, but they fell out. Mr. Nobile has charged that Mr. Tripp plagiarized material written by him and fabricated evidence of Lincoln's homosexuality.
"Tripp's book is a fraud," Mr. Nobile said in an interview. He declined to say what was fraudulent, however, because he said he was writing his own article about it.
After Mr. Nobile made his charges, Free Press delayed publication. "We made some slight changes," said Adam Rothberg, a spokesman for the publishing house, "and we are satisfied that we are publishing a book that reflects Mr. Tripp's ideas and is supported by his research and belief." The manuscript was edited by Mr. Tripp's friend Lewis Gannett.
Source: Philip Nobile
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Publish: Homophobia in Lincoln Studies?
By Philip NobileMr. Nobile is the author of Intellectual Skywriting: Literary Politics and the New York Review of Books and editor of Judgment at the Smithsonian, which reprinted the banned script of the Smithsonian's 50th anniversary exhibit of the Enola Gay.
Ever since talk about Lincoln's possible bisexuality crept into the mainstream circa 1995--it was déjà vu for gay historians--Lincoln scholars have been unanimously skeptical and sometimes even hostile to the idea. Perhaps the best word to describe their reaction is homophobic, that is, fear of a lavender Lincoln. While there is plenty of material on Lincoln's sex life and his bonding with men more than women, biographers have never written about the intellectually tempting homosexual angle. Thus, there is no literature on the boy-marries-boy imagery in the poem attached to the Reuben Chronicles satire (1829) or on Carl Sandburg's suggestive lines in The Prairie Years about Lincoln and Joshua Speed's having "spots soft as may violets" and "a streak of lavender." (Even Sandburg did not elaborate on this clear homosexual allusion, nor did he hint that Lincoln's attachment to Speed indicated a general preference for "the love of comrades.")
Gabor Boritt, a renowned Lincolnist and director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, has made the most direct refutation of the gay theory in a new anthology titled The Lincoln Enigma. In the introduction, Boritt devotes a little more than a page to the matter. Significantly, he cites long ignored evidence of Lincoln's same-sex interest in the person of Captain David V. Derickson, the President's bodyguard and intimate companion between September 1862 and April 1863. Nevertheless, Boritt's treatment of the Derickson affair, based on an 1895 regimental history by Derickson's commanding officer, whose credentials Boritt fails to identify, is not rigorous.
I tried to point out some problems in Boritt's introduction in a detailed email dated March 2, 2001. Also, I asked him to read a chapter on Derickson from my book-in-progress, A Harp of a Thousand Strings: The Queer Lincoln Theory. Incidentally, I do not argue that Lincoln was bisexual, but rather that bi-sexuality is a better explanation than the standard all-heterosexual one. In addition, I offered to submit my partial manuscript to his publisher, Oxford University Press. As the following correspondence reveals, Boritt and his editor, Peter Ginna, were less than receptive, confirming my point that homophobia is not alien to the land of Lincolnania.
THE EXCHANGE OF LETTERS WITH Mr. BORITT
[3-2-01] Dear Professor Boritt:
Congratulations on the publication of "The Lincoln Enigma."
Since I am currently writing a book on the theory behind Lincoln's homosexuality, I was fascinated by your introductory remarks on same. I have four comments.
First, Lincoln's sleeping arrangement with Captain David V. Derickson was covered briefly in "Reveille in Washington," a 1941 Pulitzer Prize book by Margaret Leech. Although Leech neither quoted nor footnoted Thomas Chamberlin's "History of the One-Hundred-and-Fiftieth Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers," she paraphrased his revelation in her text and listed his regimental history in her biliography. "Reveille" remains in print with an introduction by James McPherson. A half-century earlier, Ida Tarbell's biography reported on the special friendship between the President and his bodyguard, citing Derickson's 1888 newspaper article and Lincoln's November 1862 letter that saved the favored officer from transfer. Tarbell did not use Chamberlin as a source. Yet she appeared skittish about the degree of intimacy between AL and DD. She strategically ellipsized certain passages in her long excerpt from Derickson's memoir, passages indicating a profound attraction on Lincoln's part. In other words, the suggestive material on Derickson was available to Lincoln scholars for decades, long before Gabriel Pinkser.
Second, you wrote: "Lincoln's male bonding went beyond what circumstances dictated," meaning that he surreptitiously slept with his bodyguard in a comfortable mansion in 1862 when his wife was out of town. Yet a few sentences later, you seemed to retract your point about Lincoln's transgression of the mores. You wrote: "what may suggest homosexuality in our time most likely did not so much as occur to most people in his time." This statement is certainly true vis-a-vis the rude frontier of Lincoln's youth, but not cosmopolitan Washington of his middle age. If Lincoln went "beyond what circumstances dictated" in 1862 by taking his bodyguard to bed, why would Lincoln's contemporaries not wonder about the sexual implications? Of course, it is impossible to know what "most people" in Lincoln's day might have thought about this matter. In any case, popular perception is irrelevant to historical truth, whatever it turns out to be. Fortunately, we know exactly how one Lincoln insider reacted when she heard the Derickson rumor. "What stuff!," exclaimed Elizabeth Woodbury Fox, wife of Lincoln's naval aide, in her diary of November 16, 1862.
Third, referring to Lincoln's subjective state of mind regarding the possible homosexual nature of the overnights with Derickson, you wrote: "There is no evidence that it did to Lincoln." This observation is true, but beside the point. At issue is not whether Lincoln perceived his feelings as homosexual, but whether he had such feelings and may have acted on them. The midnight rendezvous with Derickson are the best evidence that he did.
Fourth, you wrote: "Context is all important, and the first duty of the historian is to understand the past in terms understood by the people who lived in that past." I doubt that many of your peers would agree. Isn't the first duty of the historian to relate the basic facts of history and only secondarily to deal with context? For example, St. Thomas More blessed the torture and execution of heretics. That is a fact. But, in context, he probably did not consider himself a sadist and killer. Nonetheless, his interior feelings would not change the facts. As for Lincoln, as previously stated, either he had sex with men or he did not. Context comes later.
Granted your interest in the homosexual question, perhaps you would be kind enough to read and comment on my manuscript, which will be mailed to you forthwith. The first chapter (of three) is on the Lincoln-Derickson affair.
I look forward to your response.
Thank you.
[4-30-01] Dear Mr. Nobile,
Please ask your readers to read what I say on the subject in the text of The Lincoln Enigma.
Sincerely, Gabor Boritt
[4-30-01] Dear Prof. Boritt,
Thanks for your email of April 30. I have read what you wrote about Lincoln's alleged homosexuality in "The Lincoln Engima" and have pointed out some serious objections. Historian to historian, would you please respond? Otherwise my readers and I may presume that you cannot overcome the criticism and that your explanation of Lincoln's purported "love of comrades" is not only inadequate but intellectually dishonest.
Thanks for your consideration.
Philip Nobile
THE EXCHANGE OF LETTERS WITH Mr. GINNA
[2-23-01] Dear Mr. Ginna,
I note that Gabor Boritt dismissed the claim of Lincoln's bedroom association with Captain David V. Derickson in his new book. Actually, I have done much work on Derickson. He is the subject of the first chapter of my manuscript in progress--A Harp of a Thousand Strings: The Queer Theory of Lincoln.
I am neither gay nor an advocate of Lincoln's homosexuality. But I do believe that bisexuality (he was bisexual by definition) is the best explanation for Lincoln's sex life.
I would like to submit the preface and first three chapters of my manuscript to Oxford. What's my next move?
Thank you.
Philip Nobile
[2-23-01] Dear Mr. Nobile,
Thanks for your query. I have to confess I doubt the MS you describe would be suitable for my list, not because I object to the subject but because any discussion of it seems too speculative to sustain a whole book. And even if you were to demonstrate that Lincoln were bisexual, I'm not sure that that would enlighten us in any important way. So I don't think it would be worthwhile for me to invite you to send the manuscript.
Thanks for your interest in OUP; I hope you enjoy the other essays in Gabor Boritt's book.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Ginna
[2-23-01] Dear Mr. Ginna,
Thanks for your swift reply. If you don't mind my wondering, without reading my chapters or outline, why would you speculate that my subject could not "sustain a whole book"? And second, how can a total revision of Lincoln's sex life be "unimportant"? If I am right, all of Lincoln biography is wrong and all of Lincoln's biographers were blind. My book is just as much about Lincoln experts as well as Lincoln himself.
In particular, Boritt has done a disservice to Lincoln scholarship by dismissing Thomas Chamberlin's "History of the 150th Regiment" without telling the readers more about the author and his work. For example, Chamberlin was Derickson's commanding officer and an eyewitness to the close relationship with between Lincoln and Derickson. Chamberlin was also a college graduate who furthered his studies in law and philosophy in Germany. In short, he was a serious historian unlikely to sully his regiment with pure gossip implicating his commander-in-chief and a fellow officer in immoral and illegal behavior. Boritt seems to be following the het line of all Lincoln scholars, with the exception of Thomas Lowry, who refuse to examine Lincoln's passionate preference for male company (though Sandburg referred to Lincoln's "streak of lavender and spots soft as May violets" in connection with Joshua Speed).
Incidentally, did you know that Lincoln wrote a boy-sex poem when he was 20?
Philip Nobile
[2-23-01] Dear Mr. Nobile,
I won't get into a debate with you over Lincoln's sexuality or whether it was important. If you believe your outline and chapters can persuade me that your book would be worth publishing, you're welcome to send them to me. I thought it only fair to tell you that I think for my list the project is a long shot.
Yours,
Peter Ginna
I hope you're not trying to sell a book on Jim's forum.
I'm more than ready for the characters behind this book to give it a rest.
Enough already yet.
Source: Deborah Hayden, POX: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis, ISBN 0-465-02881-0
Abraham Lincoln
Excerpt from Lincoln chapter:
According to Lincoln’s biographer, friend, and law partner for eighteen years, William Herndon, Lincoln told him that he had been infected with syphilis in Beardstown in 1835 or 1836. Herndon wrote to his co-author “Friend Weik” in January 1891, wishing that he had not put the confidence in writing:
When I was in Greencastle in 1887 I said to you that Lincoln had, when a mere boy, the syphilis, and now let me explain the matter in full, which I have never done before. About the year 1835-36 Mr. Lincoln went to Beardstown and during a devilish passion had connection with a girl and caught the disease. Lincoln told me this and in a moment of folly I made a note of it in my mind and afterwards I transferred it, as it were, to a little memorandum book which I loaned to Lamon, not, as I should have done, erasing that note. About the year 1836-37 Lincoln moved to Springfield and took up quarters with [Joshua] Speed; they became very intimate. At this time I suppose that the disease hung to him and, not wishing to trust our physicians, wrote a note to Doctor Drake, the latter part of which he would not let Speed see, not wishing Speed to know it. Speed said to me that Lincoln would not let him see a part of the note. Speed wrote to me a letter saying that he supposed L’s letter to Doctor Drake had reference to his, L’s crazy spell about the Ann Rutledge love affair, etc., and her death. You will find Speeds’ letter to me in our Life of Lincoln. The note to Doctor Drake in part had reference to his disease and not to his crazy spell as Speed supposes. The note spoken of in the memorandum book was a loose affair, and I never intended that the world should see or hear of it. I now wish and for years have wished that the note was blotted out or burned to ashes. I write this to you, fearing that at some future time the note -- a loose thing as to date, place, and circumstances -- will come to light and be misunderstood. Lincoln was a man of terribly strong passion, but was true as steel to his wife during his whole marriage life, as Judge Davis has said, saved many a woman, and it most emphatically true, as I know. I write this to you to explain the whole matter for the future if it should become necessary to do so. I deeply regret my part of the affair in every particular.
In a postscript, he adds that a Mrs. Dale saw the book and took note of its contents, and so he fears that the contents may come to light from that source.
Herndon tells us that Lincoln moved in with Speed in 1836-37 and, to repeat from the letter, “at this time I suppose that the disease hung to him [italics added] and, not wishing to trust our physicians, [he] wrote a note to Doctor Drake.” But there is an odd discrepancy in the Speed letter to Herndon published in the Life of Lincoln (completed in 1888-the year before the letter to Weik cited above) and dated 30 November 1866. Here Speed puts the date of the letter to Drake several years later:
Lincoln wrote a letter -- a long one which he read to me -- to Dr. Drake of Cincinnati, descriptive of his case. Its date would be in December 1840, or early in January 1841. I think that he must have informed Dr. Drake of his early love Miss Rutledge, as there was a part of the letter which he would not read... I remember Dr. Drake’s reply, which was, that he would not undertake to prescribe for him without a personal interview. Here Speed tells Herndon that Lincoln would not let him read part of the letter and guesses that he must have informed Drake of his early love for Ann Rutledge. He remembers Dr. Drake’s reply, that he could not prescribe medication without a personal interview.
The first reference to a contact with Dr. Drake in 1836-37 would have been within one or two years of the initial infection in Beardstown, thus in the highly infectious stage. The second reference, December 1840-January 1841, would have been four to five years after Beardstown, or well into the middle stage of disease. Hirschhorn, Feldman, and Greaves assign the Drake contact to the later date.
Mary Todd Lincoln
Excerpt from Lincoln chapter:
Syphilis was suggested in Mary Todd’s medical history when Norbert Hirschhorn and Robert Feldman published an article in 1999 reviewing the work of the four doctors who had diagnosed her progressive spinal trouble. Finding a clear case of tabes dorsalis, Hirschhorn and Feldman argue convincingly that the doctors would have known very well by then that tabes was caused by syphilis in the majority of cases and would have opted to save her reputation (and to assure a benefit that might have been withheld by a censorious Congress) by stating that her tabes dorsalis was caused by an injury to her spine when she fell from the French chair. “Given the widespread medical knowledge about tabes dorsalis at the close of 1881 and what then was considered its most likely cause [syphilis], it was inevitable that the four physicians chose the least pejorative diagnosis, however marginally acceptable it was to progressive medical opinion.” Jonathan Hutchinson concluded that it was generally accepted that tabes occurs “almost solely” in those who have previously suffered from syphilis. P.J. Möbius went one step further: “The longer I reflect upon it, the more firmly I believe that tabes never originates without syphilis.”
The tabes diagnosis gives a fresh interpretation to the reasons for Mary Todd’s incarceration: “Symptoms imputed to insanity at her trial clearly had their origin in the organic disease of tabes dorsalis.” The authors point out that the lightning pains of tabes were often described with vivid images appropriate to such extreme agony, such as having wires taken out of the eyes or, as Mary also complained, of being hacked to pieces by knives, or of having a sharp, burning agony in the back, or feeling as if one were on fire.
Source: Deborah Hayden
February 21, 2004February 21, 2004
Abraham Lincoln & Syphilis -- idea for an article
The source that Abraham Lincoln had been infected with syphilis is none other than Lincoln himself, according to his biographer, friend, and law partner, William Herndon. In a letter to his co-author, Herndon wrote: "When I was in Greencastle in 1887, I said to you that Lincoln had, when a mere boy, the syphilis, and now let me explain the matter in full, which I have never done before. About the year 1835-36, Mr. Lincoln went to Beardstown and during a devilish passion had connection with a girl and caught the disease. Lincoln told me this and in a moment of folly I made note of it in my mind and afterwards I transferred it, as it were, to a little memorandum book which I loaned to Lamon, not, as I should have done, erasing that note. About the year 1836-37 Lincoln moved to Springfield and took up quarter with [Joshua] Speed; they became very intimate. At this time I suppose that the disease hung to him, and not wanting to trust our physicians, wrote a note to Doctor Drake."
In my chapter on Lincoln, I made the point that there is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence that Lincoln did have syphilis, and that he was probably taking the "little blue mercury pills" not for melancholia as has been suggested, but for on-going syphilis.
What is remarkable about this whole story is how it has been almost completely ignored in the vast Lincoln scholarship. The question of whether or not Lincoln had syphilis, and how good the clinical evidence of that is, demands further research. But there is a more interesting question. What if Lincoln believed that he had syphilis? And why have there been so many biographies of Lincoln that don't even mention Herndon's letter, let alone ponder the implications?
Gore Vidal is about the only one who brought the whole thing into the open, when he said on the Larry King television program, that both Abraham and Mary Lincoln were infected with syphilis. But he didn't do his homework to pull together a convincing story -- and he didn't have Norbert Hirschhorn's two articles -- the one showing that the "blue mass" that Lincoln took was mercury, or the one showing that Mary Todd's four doctors in 1882 almost assuredly believed that she was suffering from tertiary syphilis in the form of tabes dorsalis. (I make the point in my chapter that Mary Todd's mental imbalance points toward a diagnosis of taboparesis-- that is, both tabes and paresis, but that is another story.
Douglas L. Wilson (co-director of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College, in Galesburg, Illinois) mentions the Herndon-Greencastle passage in an article in the Atlantic, but he leaves it without comment, although he does deal with it in a bit more detail in Honor's Voice, his 1998 biography of Lincoln.
So -- this question is posed to the Lincoln scholars: what difference does it make to our view of Lincoln and his place in history if he was, as he said to Herndon, another secret syphilitic?
I'm tempted to write to a handful of Lincoln scholars and ask them this question.
Gore Vidal
Devotees of the Mount Rushmore school of history like to think that the truely great man is a virgin until his wedding night; and a devoted monogamist thereafter. Apparently, Lincoln was indeed "true as steel" to Mary Todd even though, according to Herndon, "I have seen women make advances and I have seen Lincoln reject or refuse them. Lincoln had terrible strong passions for women, could scarcely keep his hands off them, and yet he had honor and strong will, and these enabled him to put out the fires of his terrible passion." But in his youth he was seriously burned by those fires. In the pre-penicillin era syphilis was epidemic - and, usually, incurable. According to Herndon: "About the year 1835-36 Mr. Lincoln went to Beardstown and during a devilish passion had connection with a girl and caught the disease. Lincoln told me this . . " Later, after a long seige, Lincoln was cured, if he was cured, by a Dr. Daniel Drake of Cincinnati.
Herndon suspected that Lincoln might have given Mary Todd syphilis. If he had, that would have explained the premature deaths of three Lincoln children: "Poor boys, they are dead now and gone! I should like to know one thing that this is: What caused the death of these children? I have an opinion which I shall never state to anyone." So stated to everyone Herndon. The autopsy on Mary Todd showed a physical deterioration of the brain consistent with paresis. If Lincoln had given his wife syphilis and if he had, inadvertently, caused the death of his children, the fits of melancholy are now understandable - and unbearably tragic.
Gore Vidal
As for Lincoln's syphilis, I use the words Herndon himself used: "About the year 1835-36 Mr. Lincoln went to Beardstown and during a devilish passion had connection with a girl and caught the disease [syphilis]. Lincoln told me this . . . About the year 1836-37 Lincoln moved to Springfield . . At this time I suppose that the disease hung to him and, not wishing to trust our physicians, he wrote to Doctor Drake." Since there is no reason for Herndon to lie about this, I suppose we should all agree upon it as a fact. But since no saint has ever had syphilis, Herndon is a liar and so the consensus finds against him.
Hirschhorn and Feldman, with a third author, Ian A. Greaves, [22] followed their article on Mary Todd's tabes with another find from a letter written by Herndon: "Mr. Lincoln had an evacuation, a passage, about once a week, ate blue mass." [23] They found elemental mercury to be the active ingredient in blue mass, or blue pills, a medication Lincoln took over an extended period. They even had the blue pills recreated in the laboratory using a recipe from 1879 consisting of licorice root, rosewater, honey, and sugar, plus mercury and dead rose petals. Each pill contained approximately 65 grams of elemental mercury. The authors suggest that Lincoln may have been treated with the blue pills for melancholia, or hypochondriasis. Since syphilis sufferers were both depressed and had so many mysterious ailments that they often thought themselves to be hypochondriacs, the blue pills could have been prescribed for the "syphilis that hung to him" and melancholia and hypochondriasis at the same time.
In the "Blue Pills" article, Hirschhorn, Feldman, and Greaves find Lincoln's secrecy about the medication explained by the "opprobrium that would have been attached to the diagnosis of hypochondriasis in a person who aimed for high office." [24] Syphilis would have been very much more of a reason for circumspection, and a good reason to consult an out-of-town doctor. They suggest that Lincoln suffered from the neurobehavioral consequences of mercury intoxication -- rage, for example. Herndon recalled that Lincoln looked like Lucifer when he was in an uncontrollable temper; he once shook a man until his teeth chattered. [25] Prone to moody silences, he was also observed talking "wild and incoherent nonsense" to himself. He had insomnia and headaches and worried about a tremor in his signature. An observer noted in 1863 that Lincoln "certainly is growing feeble. He wrote a note while I was present, and his hand trembled as I never saw it before, and he looked worn and haggard." [26] Lincoln had premonitions that he did not have long to live, and he feared madness. He took the little blue pills at least until 1861, a few months after his inauguration, and may have started them much earlier. Mary Todd tried them in December 1869. She had a quick and severe reaction and supposedly discontinued them immediately.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] Hirschhorn et al., "Blue Pills," 315-332.
[23] Hertz, 199.
[24] Hirschorn et al., "Blue Pills," 328.
[25] Hirschorn et al., "Blue Pills," 318.
"Hertz": Emanuel Hertz, The Hidden Lincoln: From the Letters and papers of William H. Herndon (New York:Viking, 1938)
"Blue Pills": Norbert Hirschorn, Robert G. Feldman, and Ian A. Greaves, "Abraham Lincoln's Blue Pills," Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 44, no. 3 (Summer 2001)
Source: Deborah Hayden, POX: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis, Basic Books, (2003), pp. 45-8.
Mercurial remedies were developed by the alchemist Paracelsus (1493-1541) in an attempt to find the "Elixir Vitae," a substance that would purify the body of all disease. Gold, which neither rusts nor tarnishes and is the color of the sun, source of life and energy, was amalgamated with mercury derived from blood-red colored cinnabar ore. Mercury, which had for centuries been used by the Arabs to treat leprosy and yaws, was first used in Europe for the treatment of syphilis in 1497. Hawkers of remedies, or quacksalvers (those who quacked about their salves), promising speedy and complete cures, became known as "quacks," the pejorative aspect deriving in particular from those itinerant vendors who pushed toxic mercury salve, known as quicksilver or quacksilver, for the treatment of syphilis. Reputable physicians also used mercury as their main treatment; this chemotherapy was still found to be "the most potent weapon of attack on syphilis” [2] well into the twentieth century.Mercury, a shiny element with the chemical symbol Hg, weighs 13.6 times as much as an equal volume of water. Iron, stone, and lead can float on its surface. Physicians who applied mercury-based ointments reported a lessening of their patients' pain and clearing of ulcers, but they tended to use such enormous quantities of the toxic metal that a price was paid in physical side effects, including new ulceration, dermatological eruptions, paralysis, shaking, anorexia, gastric distress, diarrhea, nausea, and rotting and loosening of teeth. The syphilitic overdosed with mercury would experience unquenchable thirst even while producing gushing saliva measured in pints and quarts, often while being encased in a steam box daily for a month. A hot iron applied to the skull to curtail salivation when absorbing vast quantities of mercury was one of the tortures these patients endured. Alchemists who distilled the quicksilver from heated cinnabar mixed the liquid metal with henna and herbs and heated it in a dry vessel over coals. The patient sat over a skillet under a cloak and inhaled the fumes.
Today, when dentists debate whether people are wise to have mercury amalgam fillings removed to prevent trace amounts of mercury escaping into the system, mercury applied to the point of extreme salivation seems unconscionable and illustrates how desperate the early practitioners were to find a cure for the hideous malady. How to kill the spirochete without killing the patient or causing damage as serious as that of the original illness was the challenge facing the first doctors treating syphilis. Oncologists today face a similar challenge with chemotherapy.
Mercury added diagnostic confusion when it produced symptoms that also mimicked other diseases or even the syphilis itself. How, for example, could a doctor distinguish the neurological damage of tertiary syphilis from the neurological damage of mercury poisoning? Or mercury paralysis from that of tabes? It was thought that mercury could cause deafness, but so could syphilis.
When the "little blue pill," also known as the small-dose gray powder pill, took the place of salve as a way of dispensing mercury in the middle of the eighteenth century, syphilitics had a treatment that was easily administered and allowed them to keep their mortifying secret. They no longer gleamed with a blue sheen or smelled like a fried potato. Mercury pills contained rosewater, honey, licorice, and conserve of rose petals. During many years of practice, Jonathan Hutchinson found "warm advocates" of treatment with the gray powder pill when the dose was kept continuous, frequent, and small. He recommended one grain of powder every six, four, three, or even two hours according to circumstances, and found that one pill four times a day was sufficient to clear up a chancre or a secondary eruption. He forbade fresh fruits and vegetables and fresh air during treatment. He specifically advised against treatment to the point of salivation except in extreme cases.
Hutchinson believed that those who had kept to long regimens of mercury were less apt than others to develop tertiary symptoms. Irregular and excessive mercurial treatment would jeopardize health, but there would be no loss to general health, Hutchinson promised, if mercury were employed in the way suggested over a long enough time. In cases where there were premonitory symptoms of late syphilis, Hutchinson even advocated a lifelong course. In the early stages, mercury destroyed the parasite, Hutchinson maintained, while in later years it was useful against inflammatory damage. John Stokes also testified to an extraordinary factor of safety combined with therapeutic effectiveness after treating some ten thousand patients who had taken hundreds of thousands of mercury rubs in his clinic.
If some thought that only mercury in abundance cured, the founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, proposed the opposite: to cure syphilis with infinitesimal doses. His student Hartmann wrote: "In that stage of the Syphilitic disease, where the Chancre or the Bubo is yet existing, one single dose of the best mercurial preparation is sufficient to effect a permanent cure of the internal disease, together with the Chancre in the space of a fortnight." As to the dose, "I was formerly in the habit of using successfully 1,2 or 3 globules of the billionth degree, i.e., the 6th centesimal dilution, for the cure of Syphilis. The higher the degrees, however, even the decillionth (the 30th) acts more thoroughly, more speedily and more mildly. If more than one dose should be required, which is seldom the case, the lower degrees may be then employed." [3] Hahnemann claimed that he had never seen syphilis breaking out in the system when the chancre had been cured by homeopathy, unless there had been a previous overuse of mercury.
It is fitting that the remedies for early syphilis potent enough to kill spirochetes deep in the tissues were the heavy metals, mercury and bismuth, and a poison, arsenic. The other major syphilis medication, potassium iodide, used more for resolution of the gummy tumors of late syphilis and for advanced syphilis of the heart, was more benign, although patients complained of depression. Martin of Lubeck first administered an iodide for syphilis in 1821, using a burned sponge for the treatment of venereal ulcers of the throat. Wallace of Dublin used potassium salt in 1834.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Burton Peter Thom, Syphilis (Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1922), 202.
[3] N.K. Banerjee, Homeopathjy in the Treatment of Gonorrhea & Syphilis (Delhi: B. Jain, 1995), 158.
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