Medieval Syphilis and Treponemal Disease

Marylynn Salmon is a Research Associate in History at Smith College. Her longstanding interest in the history of syphilis originated from her research for “The Cultural Significance of Breastfeeding and Infant Care in Early Modern England and America” (1994), when she learned that Treponema pallidum can infect the nipples of breastfeeding women, a probable reason for reliance on wetnurses in times past.

• PrefaceIntroductionChapter 1: The Contributions of Clinicians and PaleopathologistsChapter 2: Deciphering Two Opaque Sources on the Death of King Edward IV of EnglandChapter 3: Evidence from Medical Writings: A Suggestive ExampleChapter 4: Evidence from Illuminated Manuscripts, Stained Glass, and PaintingsConclusionBibliography

Medieval Syphilis and Treponemal Disease by Marylynn Salmon [...] aligns with the unitary hypothesis that yaws, bejel, and syphilis are the same disease in both pathophysiological and causal terms, despite appreciable clinical and epidemiological differences between them, in past and present. She aims to provide evidence that syphilis coexisted with nonvenereal treponemal diseases (yaws and bejel) in medieval Latin Europe on the basis of a class distribution, so that syphilis spread first among the well-off and only later on broke out as an epidemic among the ordinary people. To this end, she draws on historical sources, both documentary (written or graphic, taken from chronicles and surgical works) and artistic (illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, and paintings), mainly from the British Isles, which she judges favorable to the thesis that treponemal disease, including syphilis, was already present in medieval Europe.Salmon’s monograph is a valuable work that advances the understanding of treponemal disease in the European past with suggestive evidence for it in late medieval England from different kinds of sources, textual, graphical, and artistic. In my opinion, however, to confirm her thesis, more and better evidence of all kinds and from other places in the Old World is needed. By way of illustration, Arderne’s sores and anal fistulae could be clinically related to quite a lot of conditions other than treponemal disease. On the other hand, medieval surgical treatises, whether in Latin or other, vernacular languages, could be potentially fruitful sources to explore in this respect, and the same could be said of disease labels like lepra venerea or male/malum mortuum in medieval medical treatises.