poxblog

Dramatization of Freud's 1908 Nietzsche evenings

April 1. 1908

Otto Rank paces in excited anticipation as members of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society file into Freud's waiting room at Bergrasse 19. Eleven present, counting himself. He cleans his round steel-rimmed glasses, checks again to be sure he has an extra pen. Soon he will know if Freud is going to admit his great debt to Nietzsche.

By the window Freud is already shrouded in smoke from his cigar. Three members pay dues. Sadger borrows Archiv #3 from the library.

Hitschmann finally begins the meeting, a discussion of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, Section 3. He rambles a bit. Otto takes good notes. And then, the discussion period. Graf talks about "something breaking through" as a consequence of Nietzsche's repudiation and repression of sex following in the wake of his infection.

Otto stares out the window, remembering his shock upon learning four years ago that Nietzsche died of syphilis, not hereditary softening of the brain, which he, Otto, had so long feared for himself.

Federn speaks next. Otto writes carefully in neat black script when Federn states that Nietzsche has "come so close to our views that we can ask only, 'Where has he not come close?'" He intuitively knew a number of Freud's discoveries, Federn says, stroking his pointed beard. What garbage, Otto thinks. Freud read every word of Nietzsche beginning when he was a student, and loaded it by the shovelful into his own work.

Syphilitic Handwriting

I had hoped to include an appendix on syphilitic handwriting in POX, including a photograph of Nietzsche's in the asylum, compared with his earlier beautiful script, but there wasn't space. My publisher recently forwarded a letter from a doctor who was researching the paresis of his grandfather, also a physician, who had been infected by a patient with the famous "physician's chancre," a sore on the finger. He has in his possession several handwritten letters expressing the grandiosity of late syphilis. He has promised to send me a copy of one of them so that I can see an example of paretic penmanship. Perhaps I will scan a few examples of this type of writing and post them here.

A change in handwriting is one of the key warnings of the approach of the final stage of neurosyphilis. The first sign is a lack of ability to pay attention, with final letters left off words or words omitted, a reduction of double consonants, and repetition of words or sentences. An inability to maintain control of words to the end of a line results in letters piling up in blotches, words broken in an unusual way, words written over. A straight line becomes difficult to maintain. The person with syphilis may compensate by writing larger or smaller than usual. Previously neat penmanship degenerates progressively to a scrawl.

When exquisite handwriting was the mode of expression of sublime thought, the loss of ability to write clearly and neatly is among the most poignant illustrations of a mind struggling to maintain control.

Examples follow --

Woodrow Wilson-- and syphilis???

While I was researching POX, I ran into a reference to an article written by a librarian at the Wellcome Library hypothesizing that Woodrow Wilson had syphilis. When I saw the MEDICAL COVER-UPS IN THE WHITE HOUSE (Edward B MacMahon, M.D., and Leonard Curry (Farragut Publishing, Washington D.C., 1987) had a chapter on WW, I grabbed it. There is one reference to syphilis: after WW suffered a stroke that paralyzed the left side of his body, His doctor, Grayson, called Dr. Francis X. Dercum to the White House. Dercum, professor of nervous and mental disease at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, had written extensively about syphilis "prompting a report that the president was suffering from syphilis--undoubtedly contracted in France." (page 70). The authors speak of "wild and bizarre rumors." There is no further note about this "report."

Notes from this chapter about the president's illness follow:

Christopher Columbus: The First European Syphilitic???

Tomorrow is Columbus Day. Some will celebrate the great explorer as seen in American texbooks, others will protest against honoring a genocidal Columbus. But who will look at the sick, shackled Columbus, returning to Spain in disgrace--the Columbus who may have been one of the first Conquistadors to bring syphilis back to Europe from the New World?

From the Chapter one of POX:

Medical writers have attributed Columbus’s physical complaints to ailments such as typhus, rheumatic heart disease, and Reiter’s Syndrome. It was not until well into the twentieth century that Thomas Parran, one of the originators of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study and later Surgeon General of the United States under Franklin D. Roosevelt, first suggested that Columbus’s death was due to syphilis: “With his whole body dropsical from the chest downward, like that which is caused by injury to the valves of the heart, his limbs paralyzed, and his brain affected—all symptoms of late, fatal syphilis—he died on 20 May 1506.” He was draped in the gray robe of the order of St. Francis, poor, fallen from royal grace, and semi-mad. His last words were: “In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum.” Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.

Other researchers since Parran have cautiously raised the possibility of syphilis. Christopher Wills asked: “Was Columbus himself suffering from syphilis, and does this explain his progressive mental derangement? Certainly when he returned to Spain from his final voyage at the end of 1504, he was clearly mentally ill and his legs were paralyzed.” Philip Marshall Dale ventured: “The sickness may have been syphilis.” Anton Luger concurred: “His symptoms resemble those observed in general paresis or in taboparesis, both conditions of late syphilis.” Notes to follow:

Einstein & Syphilis???

Kris and I were watching ER, where there was a mention of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. She was familiar with AAA from science reporting; I mentioned that Einstein had died of one, and that I had read in one of his biographies that his doctor said he had never seen an aneurysm like that in any case not involving syphilis. When I checked to see if there was any mention of syphilitic infection when Einstein was a young man, I found Michelle Zackheim's speculation that he infected his wife Mileva with syphilis, passed on to their daughter Lieserl, who died when less than two years old. Two clues: Enough to warrant asking more questions? Why did Zackheim suspect syphilis? Did Einstein have a severe fever around that time? What more is there to learn about his friendship with Catapano, a syphilis researcher? Where is Einstein's brain (dissected in 240 parts at autopsy) now? Could it be checked for treponemes? Did he ever make any statements about syphilis? Did his doctor suspect syphilis before the aneurysm? What was his health like during his long life? On the next page, a few notes (for anyone interested in doing more digging? Or for me if I continue on this tack . . . I will, at least, order Zackheim's book (which I note is available used, poor Michelle, poor Riverhead Books, for a mere 44 cents . . .)

Pox Notes

Good week for POX.

The high point was a wonderful blurb from Oliver Sacks, just as the paperback was going to press. Ellen and I worked together to go over the reviews and pick out blurbs. I reread all fifty reviews carefully. Very enjoyable. Pondered back and forth about adding one more line add the end of the Beethoven chapter, disagreeing with George Marek: to the music it doesn't matter if Beethoven had spirochetes or a hangnail. Decided to leave it as is. So it's a wrap and will be out on December 23rd.

Hour interview on NRP with Joel Martin, airing on November 1 on lots of stations. He asked good questions and I went a bit farther out on a limb than I have on past interviews. Will see where that goes. The Taiwan edition went to press, alas, at the last minute with no photos on the jacket. Their design was lovely, but they used the Corbis images, which had to go, and no time to replace them. Too bad. I'll have to be sure to figure out replacement images with the other two foreign editions.

One comment already on the MS/spirochete link, a request for the article. I guess this is what makes a blog fun (and useful).

Starting to think about the next writing project. Obvious ideas are the Lou Salome/1882 article, which I left midstream when I digressed on Nietzsche's syphilis, and on and on, or more on Lincoln, or more on Hitler. Or something entirely different? Yesterday I started an outline for an article (or short book?) on syphilis and the Lincoln scholars, and expansion of my too-short Lincoln chapter. Five pages and just a start. How much do I want to do continue with that? I searched through The Atlantic to reconstruct the history of how Lincoln has been written about in the long history of that magazine.