Veni, VD, Vici – The Cultural Legacy of Syphilis

Article by Sarah Murphy-Young. Edited by Emily Geens. Additional Research by Lauren Puckey.

Since its alleged début in Barcelona in 1493, the origin of syphilis has been hotly debated. In the 15th century, sailors and soldiers who frequented the brothels of Europe circulated theories of national attribution, whilst the superstitious blamed it on the ill-fated appearances of five planets in the sign of a scorpion, the Zodiac sign that rules the genitals. A popular hypothesis was that Columbus and his crew returned from the New World with more than chocolate and coffee in their breeches and this, in turn, led to the common believe that syphilis was society’s punishment for transgressing the God-given boundaries of human endeavor – a divine scourge that punished Europe for the collapse of the feudal system; the rise of capitalism and the desire to find other worlds to feed the new economic system. Regardless of such speculations however, it is clear that a particularly virulent form of the disease awaited the invading French Army in Naples in 1494 and was spread the following year into almost every European country.

Typically, syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by the spiochetal bacteria, Treponema pallidum. The symptoms of the disease manifest themselves firstly with skin lesions, followed by wart-like rashes, fevers, hair loss and malaise. Failure to treat the disease however, can lead to sterility, paralysis, blindness, insanity and eventually death, sometimes years after the initial exposure. With the advent of penicillin in the 20th century, syphilis could be widely treated, yet, in its hay day it bore effortlessly into the scabrous fissures that were common in the unwashed crotches of the day and became more widespread and devastating than AIDS is today.

The ubiquity of syphilis during the Renaissance made it a central element to the dynamic culture of the period. The epidemic that spread across Europe gave rise to the first condom (a linen sheath soaked in iodine); justified the sexual Puritanism of many religious groups; closed the medieval theatres in the 16th century; established the hand shake as the preferred form of greeting in place of public kissing, and, from 1570 was linked to the growing fashion for wigs. 

Predictably, syphilis diffused into all levels of society. Notable syphilitic individuals include Napoleon Bonaparte, Pope Alexander VI, Pope Julius II, Cardinal Wolsey, Friedrich Nietzsche, Vincent Van Gogh, Ivan the Terrible, Paul Gauguin, Thomas Hardy, Al Capone and Henry VIII. Even Hitler, who dedicated 14 pages in Mein Kampf to the ‘Jewish disease’, is speculated to have had it (this of course is highly contested; it is more than customary to impugn the sexual capacity of enemy leaders. If rumour is anything to go by, he also had a deformed penis, one testicle and fled to Argentina on a U-boat).

It was published in 1584 that a young man might have to part with 40 shillings, or more, in a brothel for ‘a bottle or two of wine, the embracement of a painted strumpet and the French welcome [syphilis]’ and by the 1600’s, one third of Paris – la ville d’amour – was syphilitic. At this point syphilis had become synonymous with sexual deviance. It has been suggested that the inexplicable wave of witchcraft hysteria that swept across Europe during the same period was a product of the widespread explosion of misogyny linked to the syphilis epidemic. Women outside the realms of social respectability were often blamed for the surge of infection and in the 16th century the brothels were closed in an attempt to regulate the spread of the disease. Of course, this had little effect and women merely took their business onto the streets.

Although the treatment of syphilis has ranged from herbal remedies to the use of arsenic and malaria, the most common ‘cure’ was mercury which was swallowed, injected or rubbed into the skin. Its popularity gave rise to the expression ‘a night in the arms of Venus leads to a lifetime on Mercury’. However, with the discovery of penicillin and its widespread manufacture in the 1940s and onwards, such treatments were rendered obsolete. It is interesting to note that during the Second World War, penicillin was more commonly used to cure troops infected by syphilis than it was to treat infected battle wounds. During the Great War, the U.S military lost the services of 18,000 servicemen per day as a result of syphilitic infection and although this number had been reduced 30-fold by 1944, there were still around 600 servicemen incapacitated each day in WWII through infection. In order to improve the sexual hygiene of its troops, the army issued a number of films, posters and adverts to warn soldiers against the dangers of V.D., urging men to avoid illicit sexual contact on the grounds of patriotism, pride, faithfulness to loved ones at home and personal interest.

Although syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases have been largely tamed in the 20th century, the social stigmas and superstitions that go hand in hand with sexually transmitted disease have continued well into the present day. Until the 20th century, the geographical locus of the disease shifted time and time again according to circumstances (with the rise of colonialism in the 19th century, a new argument would place the origins in Africa), while today the spreading of STDs is largely attributed to specific social groups: homosexuals, prostitutes, teenagers ...etc. On the international stage, the iconography of sexual transmitted infection and its association with illicit sex has set a foundation for AIDS/HIV related discrimination which still plagues many communities. While today it might only be an ugly, albeit darkly comic, inconvenience, it is clear that syphilis has played a significant role in shaping our cultural attitude towards sex and sexually transmitted disease.

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Syphilis had been called the “French disease” in Italy, Poland and Germany, the “Italian disease” in France and the Dutch called it the “Spanish disease”. These “national” names are due to the disease often being spread by foreign sailors and soldiers during their frequent sexual contact with local prostitutes.

During the 16th century, it was called “great pox” in order to distinguish it from smallpox.

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