The French call it the Neapolitane disease. Everyone else calls it the French disease. Who cares what it’s called, so long as we know what disease we’re talking about. (Note that Dr. Paré is French)
People give and take syphilis through touching – especially unclean copulation. It starts with genital ulcers, then pustules on the body, then on the entrails, giving the patient cruel and nocturnal pains throughout the body and joints. Over time, it creates knots and stones, and dissolves the bones.
Some people lose one eye, others lose both, or large portions of their eyelids. Others look ghastly, others become squint eyed (probably a loss of vision). Some lose their hearing, others, their nose. The roof of the mouth may become full of holes, affecting their speech. Some can’t close their mouths. Others must cut off their penises, due to caruncles and inflamed pustules blocking the passage of urine, and some women’s genitals are completely destroyed.
Others lose all strength of their arms or legs, and still others grow stiff in all their limbs and can’t do anything but make sound with their voice, which serves no other purpose but to bewail their miseries, for which it is scantily sufficient.
Their hair falls off from their heads, their hands and feet split open with scaly cracks, their brains tainted, their whole bodies shaken by fits of epilepsy, troubled with filthy and cursed fluxes of the belly, continually casting forth stinking and bloudy filth.
A man or woman with severe ulcers on their genitals will infect the other; thus a woman gets the disease by a man casting it into her hot, open and moist womb. A man gets it from a woman who has recently received the virulent seed of a whore-master polluted with this disease, and his mucous remains in the wrinkles of the woman’s womb, which is then drawn in by the pores of the standing and open penis.
Yet this disease may be caught by breathing or sharing bedsheets that have sweat or fluid from ulcers on it. Drinking from the same vessel as someone infected will also assail you, for by the impure touch of their lips, they leave infected fluid and spittle upon the edges of the cup, which is no less contagious than that of leprous persons, or the foam of rabid dogs.
A woman with syphilis can infect a child by frequently and persistently kissing it. The tender and soft substance of a little child may be corrupted by receiving those filthy vapors.
A nursing babe drinks up the seeds of this disease from its wet nurse’s milk, which is blood whitened in the breasts. Likewise, infected suckling children with ulcerated mouths can transfer the disease to the nurse, through the thin, porous nipples they frequently suck.
A very good citizen of Paris provided a nurse for his wife, who had just given birth, to help with her household chores. By iIl luck, the nurse they took in had syphilis. She infected the child, the child infected the mother, the mother infected her husband, and the husband infected the other two children who frequently accompanied him in bed, being ignorant of the malignity with which he was tainted. When the baby cried almost perpetually, the mother asked me what was wrong. It was not hard to tell: the whole body was covered with venereal scabs and pustules, and both the nurse’s and the mother’s nipples were eaten in with virulent ulcers. The father and the two other children, a three-year-old and four-year-old, were also covered in scabs and pustules. I told them that they all caught syphilis from the hired nurse. With God’s help, I healed them all except the suckling babe, who died from my medicine. The hired nurse was soundly lashed in prison, and should have been whipped through all the streets of the city, but the magistrate wanted to protect the privacy of the unfortunate family.
The main reason I believe this is because through the evacuation of phlegmatic humors – saliva, stool, urine, or sweat – the disease is reduced or cured.
Young, thin men with loose bowels are more subject to this disease.
The syphilis which reigns now is far milder and easier to cure than that in former times, when it first began among us. Each day it seems to be milder. Astrologers think the cause of that to be the celestial influences which first brought in this disease. Over time, by the contrary revolutions of the stars, they lose their power and become weak. So it’s somewhat likely that after a few years it may wholly cease, just like the disease termed Mentagra, which was very similar in many symptoms and troubled many Romans in the reign of Tiberius. And Lichen, which in the time of Claudius (who succeeded Tiberius) vexed not only Italy, but all of Europe. Yet physicians would rather take the glory for themselves, that they cured these diseases with their inventions as opposed to the stars.
The last three use hydrargyrum. Experience has taught us that the decoction of Guajacum is not strong enough to extinguish syphilis, but only to temporarily relieve some symptoms.
Hydrargyrum contains all the power of Guajacum, yet is much more effective; for it heats, attenuates, cuts, resolves and dries, provokes sweat and urine, but also expels noxious humors upwards and downwards by the mouth and stool.
The best guajacum comes from a large log with a dusky color, new, gummy, with a fresh strong smell, an acrid and somewhat biting taste, and the bark cleaving very close to the wood. It has a faculty to heat, rarify, attenuate, attract, to cause sweat, and move urine, and some specific property to weaken the severity of syphilis.
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But I would here be understood to mean such bark as is not putrid and rotten with age, to which fault it is very subject, for that long before it be shipped by our people, the wood lies in heaps upon the shore in the open air, until they can find chapmen for it; which, when it is brought aboard, it is stowed in the hold or bottom of the ship, where beneath by the sea through the chinks of the boards, and above by the mariners, it usually gathers much dirt. When it is brought hither to us, it is bought and sold by weight, wherefore that it may keep the weight, the druggists lay it up in vaults and cellars under ground, where the surface thereof bedewed with much moisture can scarce escape mouldiness and rottenness. Wherefore I do not like to give the decoction either of the bark or wood which is next thereto to sick people.
Shave the guajacum into small pieces. For every pound of shavings, add 8-12 pints of fair water depending on the nature of the pieces and condition of the disease. Let the water be hot or warm, especially in winter, so it can more easily and thoroughly enter the wood and draw in its faculties in the space of 24 hours, wherein it is macerated. Boil it in a bath to avoid the taste of fire, which it will contract by boiling over a hot fire. Some disregard that step. Make a decoction in an earthen pot well glazed, over a gentle fire, so that none of the liquor runs over the mouth of the vessel.
Boil it down to half, a third, or fourth, as the nature of the patient and disease requires. Some mix many ingredients into it which have an occult and proper sympathy with that part of the body which is principally hurt by the disease. Others add purging medicines to it, but I don’t think it’s good to attempt two evacuations at once, that is, to expel the humors by sweating and by purging the belly.
Strain the decoction and add the same quantity of water to the leftover shavings, boil again without any further infusion, strain it, and add a little cinnamon for the strengthening of the stomach. This weaker drink will serve whenever the patient is thirty. Serve the first decoction at once (about 5-6 oz), warm, so that it may quickly be brought into action, and in case coldness offends the stomach. Then cover the patient well and keep him in bed so he can sweat. Put stone bottles full of hot water on the soles of his feet to help make him sweat if needed. If he suffers pains, apply a swine’s bladder to them half filled with the heated decoction.
Before he drinks the decoction, massage over all his body with warm linen cloths, so the humors may be attenuated and the pores of the skin opened.
When he has sweat for about two hours, wipe the parts opposite to the grieved places, then presently, but more gently, wipe the grieved parts themselves, otherwise a greater conflux of humors would flow to it. Then keep him in bed, shunning the cold air until he is cooled and comes to himself again.
After about 2 hours, he shall dine according to the disease and his former customs. After 6 hours, taking himself back to his bed, he shall drink the same quantity of the decoction and situate himself as before. If he is weary of his bed, it shall be sufficient to stay in the house without lying down. Although he won’t sweat, there will be a great dissipation of vapors and poisonous spirits through his pores. This is how syphilis sometimes propagates and infects a bedfellow.
Since it is requisite to blood-let and purge the body before drinking guajacum, whilst he takes it, keep the belly loose (which is tightened by the heat and dryness of such a drink) and preserve the purity of the veins by giving a suppository or laxative every fifth or sixth day.
When prescribing guajacum, warily observe the malignity of the disease as well as the nature of the patient. If their body is wasted by heat and leanness, and their skin dry and scaly (whence you may gather a certain incineration of the habit of the body), more sparingly make use of these things, but rather temper the body by moistening things taken inwardly and applied outwardly, such as baths, ointments without quicksilver, etc. And then a very weak decoction of Guajacum shall be used for a few days before your massage with quicksilver.
Provide a more plentiful diet, as it draws out the disease, because a more sparing and slender diet makes the ulcers more rebellious and contumacious, by a hectic dryness. Therefore a middle course must be kept: choose meats which are fit and naturally create good juice in the body.
It is not only great ignorance, but very cruel to treat all patients without any difference, with the strict allowance of a 4 oz ship-biscuit and 12 damask prunes. I judge it far better to diet the patient with lamb, veal, kid, young hens, fat larks, and blackbirds, because they have a far greater familiarity with our bodies than prunes.
Let his bread be made of white wheat, well-leavened, neither too new, nor tough, neither too old or hard. Let his drink be made of the strainings of the first decoction of guajacum, boiled with more water, as was formerly mentioned; yet if there arise any great weakness of the faculties, you may permit the use of a little wine, and drinking a cup of the decoction before each meal. Have him avoid sleep just after eating meat, since his head is then filled with thick vapors. Passions or perturbations of the mind must also be avoided, because these inflame and dissipate the spirits; all delights of honest pleasure are to be desired, but sex wholly avoided because it weakens all the nervous parts.
Instead of a decoction of guajacum, many use a decoction of chyna. Chyna is the root of a certain rush, knotty, rare and heavy, when it is fresh, but light when it is waxed old; it is also without smell, whence many judge it void of any effectual quality, it is brought into use out of India. Cut it into thin round slices, boil in fountain or river water, and give to patients to drink morning and evening.
The cure of syphilis which is performed by massage and friction is more certain, but not in every kind, condition and season thereof.
If the disease is chronic, a humor is tough, thick, viscous and more tenaciously fixed in the solid parts, as you may gather by the knotty tumors of the bones, then we are doing more harm than good with a friction used first, putting the patient in danger of his life unless we first prepared the humor to expulsion by emollient and digesting things.
But if it is a recent disease with pains that come and go, pustules and ulcers in the jaws, throat and privy parts (genitals), then it may be easily cured without those preparatives, especially if the humor is sufficiently obedient and prepared of itself and its own nature.
After first using general medicines, you may then come to use massage with Hydrargyrum.
The best Hydrargyrum is clear, thin, white and fluid. It may be adulterated with lead, so strain it through some sheep’s leather to make it pure. Pressing it when it is bound up, it passes through the leather leaving behind the lead on the inside.
It is usually mixed with hog’s grease and some oil of turpentine, nutmegs, cloves, sage, and Galen’s antidote.
If the patient has a choleric temper, and his blood is easily inflamed, choose less hot, attractive, and discussing things. When the body is full of knotty and scirrhous tumors, or scaly by excessive dryness, mix in moisturizers. To give the ointments a better consistency, add to each pound 4-6 yolks of boiled eggs. This ointment is called Vigoes.
For the next recipe, first boil the hog’s grease with hot herbs good for the sinews, such as sage, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, lavender, and others which the season affords. The animal grease solidifies the parts of the body syphilis afflicts.
Then compose it thus:
1. Grind the sublimatum and sulfur into a fine powder
2. Add argentum vivum, hog’s grease, and egg yolks
4. Diligently stir all together
5. Add more argentum vivum, hog’s grease, and yolks of eggs
6. Mix that all well together
7. Add the oils
8. Add treacle and mithridate (two antidotes)
9. Beat it all together and leave for a whole day
Now the ointment will be a good consistency, which I have successfully used often.
Prepare digestive syrups for the body and humors that are apt to cause an excess of body fluid or inflammation, then evacuate the humors by purging and bleeding according to the direction of a physician, then shut the patient up in a parlor or chamber made hot and free from cold blasts of wind.
Cold is most harmful in this disease because it hurts the nervous parts already damaged and it lessens the efficacy of medicines.
Many make the mistake of massaging their patients in a large room, whether in the summer or winter, exposing the patient on all sides to the winds. The wiser ones set up a cloth, like half a tent, behind the patient and massage them by the fireside to keep the cold air away.
But the best way is to put the patient either in a little room, or in the corner of a large room, separated from the rest of the room with hangings. Build a stove or make a fire in there so the patient can sit or stand, however he’s most comfortable, heated equally on all sides.
Patients anointed in a chimney by a fire’s side are heated unequally, ready to burn on the one side whilst cold on the other. This is contrary and hurtful to that we require, and if the patient is weak, he cannot stand and endure the heat of the fire. Or if he is shamefac’t, he will be unwilling to show all his body at once, naked, to the surgeon. But he may with modesty lie on a bed in a little room, wherein a stove is made, have all his limbs anointed at the joints, and be presently wrapped up, either with hot medicated clothes, carded cotton, or brown paper.
Massage the patient with ointment in the morning, when the digestion and distribution of the meat is perfect. Otherwise this would not be well performed because the powers of the body are dispersed across several operations.
If the patient is weak, about an hour before the massage give him some jelly, egg yolk, or broth made of meat boiled to pieces – but very sparingly, lest the body’s energy, intent upon the digestion of solid meats, or in great quantity, should be drawn away from that which we intend.
Begin by massaging the joints of the limbs – the wrists, elbows, knees, ankles, shoulders. As the patient gains strength and a greater agitation of the humors and body seem necessary, the emunctories (draining organs/ducts) of the principal parts may also be anointed, and the whole spine of the back; yet having much care, and always avoiding the principal and noble parts, lest we should do as those butcherly charlatans do, who equally rub over all the body, from the soles of the feet, to the crown of the head: moreover, diligent regard must be had of those parts which are seized upon by the symptoms of this disease, that they may be more anointed, and that it may be more thoroughly rubbed in.