Syphilis, or syphilis, called the “French disease” and by the s a “Polish ailment”, wreaked havoc in Europe in the XNUMXth century. According to the leading medical sages of the time, this epidemic was announced by the planetary system and was a punishment for sinners.
An excerpt from Nathan Belofsky’s book “How was Healed in the Past”, published by RM Publishing House.
The best physician of this disease was Girolamo Fracastoro. He devoted an epic poem to her, written for twenty years and thirty-six pages long. In it, he presented the intricate story of the journey of a little shepherd named Syphilus (Latin for “pig’s lover”), whose incorrect behavior offended the god Apollo, and therefore had to bear the resulting consequences.
Real life wasn’t much better. XNUMXth-century German poet and womanizer Urlich von Hutten contracted syphilis:
The boils protruded like acorns, and a hideous foul-smelling substance was oozing out of them. They were dark green in color and looked as bad as the pain, making him feel like he was on fire.
The Italian doctor Gaspar Torella applied freshly skinned pigeons to this ailment. Other medics used hot iron, knives, and drills. Mercury ointment and heat were applied first.
Fracastoro watered his patients like a turkey while roasting. One of the doctors wrote: “The smell of the fried fat spread through the air.” The purpose of such activities, both literally and figuratively, was to cleanse the body so that “all the rot would come out of the body with the bead of sweat.” Sometimes patients spat out four liters of black phlegm a day.
Against the advice of his friends, von Hutten did not agree to commit suicide. He was embittered, believing the haughty doctors had turned their backs on him and fled as usual. He also described the methods of treatment used by the ignorant but courageous surgeons who remained on the spot:
Corrosive ulcers, mercury, confinement in a steam bath for twenty and thirty days, ulceration of the gums, loosening and loss of teeth. Many sufferers dreamed of death.
The sick often had their desires fulfilled “in the grip of the most terrible agony”. Von Hutten received treatment eleven times and died at the age of thirty-five.
The need to find an effective treatment method was so urgent, and the treatment of syphilis patients so embarrassing that the French government granted an aristocrat named Le Febure the exclusive right to sell chocolate mixed with mercury:
A husband could enjoy such chocolate in the presence of his wife, without arousing her suspicions, and she also helped herself to it, not realizing that she was swallowing a cure for a venereal disease. Thanks to such innocent measures, it was possible to maintain peace and harmony at home.
As it turned out, mercury devastated patients with syphilis. In the XNUMXth century, German medical candidates took an oath not to become “murderers and makers of poisonous mixtures” by prescribing mercury to their patients. However, this element was still widely used even in the United States. Dr. Nathaniel Chapman, the first president of the American Medical Association, wrote:
If you could see what I see: figures thin as skeletons with both skull plates almost completely punctured, half of the noses missing, rotting jaws and sore throats …
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