poxblog

Abraham Lincoln & Syphilis--idea for an article

The source that Abraham Lincoln had been infected with syphilis is none other than Lincoln himself, according to his biographer, friend, and law partner, William Herndon. In a letter to his co-author, Herndon wrote: "When I was in Greencastle in 1887, I said to you that Lincoln had, when a mere boy, the syphilis, and now let me explain the matter in full, which I have never done before. About the year 1835-36, Mr. Lincoln went to Beardstown and during a devilish passion had connection with a girl and caught the disease. Lincoln told me this and in a moment of folly I made note of it in my mind and afterwards I transferred it, as it were, to a little memorandum book which I loaned to Lamon, not, as I should have done, erasing that note. About the year 1836-37 Lincoln moved to Springfield and took up quarter with [Joshua] Speed; they became very intimate. At this time I suppose that the disease hung to him, and not wanting to trust our physicians, wrote a note to Doctor Drake."

In my chapter on Lincoln, I made the point that there is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence that Lincoln did have syphilis, and that he was probably taking the "little blue mercury pills" not for melancholia as has been suggested, but for on-going syphilis.

What is remarkable about this whole story is how it has been almost completely ignored in the vast Lincoln scholarship. The question of whether or not Lincoln had syphilis, and how good the clinical evidence of that is, demands further research. But there is a more interesting question. What if Lincoln believed that he had syphilis? And why have there been so many biographies of Lincoln that don't even mention Herndon's letter, let alone ponder the implications?

Gore Vidal is about the only one who brought the whole thing into the open, when he said on the Larry King television program, that both Abraham and Mary Lincoln were infected with syphilis. But he didn't do his homework to pull together a convincing story -- and he didn't have Norbert Hirschhorn's two articles -- the one showing that the "blue mass" that Lincoln took was mercury, or the one showing that Mary Todd's four doctors in 1882 almost assuredly believed that she was suffering from tertiary syphilis in the form of tabes dorsalis. (I make the point in my chapter that Mary Todd's mental imbalance points toward a diagnosis of taboparesis-- that is, both tabes and paresis, but that is another story.

Douglas L. Wilson (co-director of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College, in Galesburg, Illinois) mentions the Herndon-Greencastle passage in an article in the Atlantic, but he leaves it without comment, although he does deal with it in a bit more detail in Honor's Voice, his 1998 biography of Lincoln.

So -- this question is posed to the Lincoln scholars: what difference does it make to our view of Lincoln and his place in history is he was, as he said to Herndon, another secret syphilitic?

I'm tempted to write to a handful of Lincoln scholars and ask them this question.

The Forgotten Bacterium that Causes Stomach Ulcers

In a post on September 21, 2003, I listed some research suggesting that spirochetes may be causal in MS --- "Acute plaques in multiple sclerosis, their pathogenic significance and the role of spirochaetes as etiological factor." by Dr. Gabriel Steiner in the Journal of Neuropathology, 11:343-72. 1952 -- and posed the question of why this research from the 1950s has been ignored.

Yesterday while reading Plague Time by Paul Ewald (New York: Free Press, 2000) pages 99-101, I noticed a similar example of lost medical knowledge; apparently, the supposedly recent discovery of the bacterium that causes stomach ulcers was known about from 1874 until the nineteen fifties, when it was dropped from medical education.

From Paul Ewald: In 1874, Arthur Boettcher, a microbe hunter, published a paper on a small, curved bacterium that he found repeatedly in stomach ulcers. Over the next fifty years, others confirmed the findings, even experimentally transmitting the bacterium to lab animals. In the late 1940s peptic ulcers were being successfully treated with antibiotics, Aureomycin (chlortetracycline), in New York hospitals. Then, around 1950, discussion of infectious causation of ulcers disappeared from the literature and the treatment regimen. Medical texts from 1950 through early 1990s attributed peptic ulcers to gastric acidity, smoking, acohol consumption, and genetic preidspositions--anything but infection. Around 1980, after three decades of medical impotence against ulcers, a young internist in Perth, Australia named Barry Marshall noticed the curved bacteria in tissue samples of ulcer patients. Microbiologists found the bacilli in all their duodenal ulcer patients and 80% of peptic ulcers. In 1982 they cultured Helicobacter pylori "It is not clear why almost all medical experts ignored for four decades the evidence that ulcers could be caused by infection." (page 100).

Paul Ewald is a professor of biology at Amherst College. He was the first recipient of the George E. Burch Fellowship in Theoretic Medicine and Affiliated Sciences, and he conceived a new discipline, evolutionary medicine. He is the author of Evolution of Infectious Disease.

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 . . .)

Daudet and Sherard

Reading Robert Sherard's biography of Daudet. I have a lovely first edition that cost $5 on Bookfinder. The pages were still uncut. Nice companion to Julian Barnes's translation of Daudet's journals, In the Land of Pain.

Fifteen years ago, at one of Flaubert’s receptions, those present noticed a pallor in Daudet’s hands. He recalled that the night before he had an attack of hemorrhage of the lungs. It frightened him; he must consult Potain. (415-16).

Spirochetes, AIDS, MS and Alzheimers

The spirochete T. pallidum causes syphilis. Other spirochetes cause Lymes disease, yaws, bejel. The relationship between a past history of syphilis and AIDS is highly controversial. (Sometime I will post the key links about this debate.) The most startling information I've run into in a long time has to do with possible links between spirochetes and Alzheimers and spirochetes and Multiple Sclerosis. Judit Miklossy, in an article in NeuroReport in 1993, confirmed that in autopsies of 14 cases of confirmed Alzheimers Disease, spirochetes were found in the blood, spinal fluid, and brain tissue. No spirochetes were found in a control group. Now Colman Jones emails me another fascinating reference: a 2001 article in Infection showing spirochetal cysts in the spinal fluid of 10 out of 10 MS patients. Small samples, old research, but . . . did anyone follow up? Try to replicate it? It is certainly worth getting these articles and seeing where they led, if anywhere. Pertinent question: WHICH spirochetes did they find?