Syphilis: The History of an Eponym

Abstract

In the late fifteenth century, a hideous contagious disease, never previously seen or heard of, swept across Europe. It was “so cruel, so distressing, so appalling,” said Joseph Grünpeck (1473–1532), “that until now nothing more terrible or disgusting has ever been known on this earth”. The “never previously seen or heard of” disease was syphilis. When it first appeared, physicians and lay people had no term for it and invented various names to describe its causes and symptoms. The present essay is an ontological typology of many of those common names, before syphilis, an eponym named after a mythological figure, became the standard name for this sexually transmitted disease. Although syphilis is a common name rather than the kind of proper names generally discussed in Names, its eponymous character lends itself to some of the same ontological and epistemological analyses used to examine proper names.

Keywords:

• syphilis
• disease
• pox
• Lues Venerea

Notes

1. “Disease,” the name for a condition of the body or an organ whose functions is disturbed, originated in the fourteenth century. Its present meaning of a “species of disorder or ailment, exhibiting special symptoms or affecting a special organ” dates from the mid-fifteenth century (Oxford English Dictionary 1933).

2. Syphilis is a much less virulent disease than when it first appeared. Although still frightening, by the late sixteenth century it was no longer a sudden killer (Sutherland 1987, 23). Syphilis’ symptoms are typically divided into three stages. The primary stage refers to the first appearance of symptoms, which occurs about a week to a month after initial exposure, and typically takes the form of a chancre, a one to two centimeter round ulcer with sharp raised edges, that feels hard to the touch, at the point of contact. A short time after its appearance, even if untreated, the chancre disappears without leaving a scar. A few days or weeks later in the untreated condition, a secondary stage of infection occurs, characterized by the appearance of numerous symptoms, the most common of which are copper-colored pustules all over the body. When the pustules break, a disgusting pus leaks out which leaves a crusted disfiguring sore or “crust.” Other common effects include pain in the joints, bone degeneration, hair loss, hoarseness due to an ulcerated larynx, and gnarled testicles. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the treatment for the latter was their immersion in boiling oil, which turned the testicles into “potatoes.” During the tertiary and final stage, which may not occur until some years later, and occurs only in relatively few cases, blindness, facial disfigurement, paralysis, insanity, and finally death occur. Shakespeare’s “down with the nose … take the bridge quite away” in Timon of Athens (4.3.157–158) refers to collapse of the nasal bridge. John Aubrey, in his Brief Lives (1898 [1669], 206), said William Davenant’s sex with a prostitute “cost him his Nose.” The reason Erik, in Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera (1911, 11), wears a mask is to hide the “two big black holes, as in a dead man’s skull,” his nasty yellow skin, and the absent nose, “a horrible thing to look at,” the vestiges of third-stage syphilis. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde describes how the face of the dissipated Dorian held its beauty while the rest of his body was ravaged by syphilis.

3. The consensus among most historians today is that the disease originated in America and that, on their return, one or more of Columbus’ men infected prostitutes who in turn infected the armies marching across Europe at the time. Support for the New World origin hypothesis is based on signs of syphilis in the bones of Native Americans from graveyards dating prior to Columbus, and its absence in skeletons from pre-Columbian Europe (Arrizabalaga, Henderson, and French 1997, 4–19). The archaeological evidence is buttressed by a treatise by a Barcelona physician, Dr Ruy Diaz de Isla (1462–1542), stating that in 1493 he had treated several of Columbus’ men who had just returned from the New World for a disease “previously unknown and unheard of” immediately after their return from Haiti. After Columbus’ second voyage in 1494, physician Diaz de Isla said he treated many more such cases (Taylor 1895, 19).

4. Various writers on Shakespeare have pointed out that references to syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases are so pervasive in Shakespeare’s plays, e.g. Troilus and Cressida has 51 lines and Timon of Athens has an even greater 65 lines referring to syphilis (Benley 1989; Fabricius 1994; Ross 2012), he seems to have had a “venereal obsession” (Burgess 1970, 221), possibly because he suffered from the disease himself (Ross 2005, 399–404). Pox and its variants continued to be used as a name for syphilis up to the nineteenth century, e. g. poxter: someone afflicted with the disease; poxologist: a pox doctor; and poxology, the study of syphilis (Farmer and Henley 1902, 278).