Syphilis in the Civil War

[frogmarch]

I obtained my great-grandfather's Civil War medical records from the National Archives. An unmarried man in his early thirties during the war, he was a sergeant in the Union Army artillery. The records show that for five weeks in the autumn of 1863 he was hospitalized and treated for syphilis.

I've read that Union soldiers with syphilis were discharged, but my great-grandfather returned to duty, whereupon he transferred to the 22nd NY Cavalry, retaining his high character evaluations from his Artillery superiors. He was immediately commissioned to 2nd lieutenant in the 22nd, then shortly thereafter to 1st lieutenant. He remained in the 22nd NY Cavalry until the end of the war.

He married my great-grandmother soon after the war, and they had two healthy children who lived to be in their late sixties. My great-grandmother died young, of consumption (tuberculosis), but my great-grandfather lived to be 62, dying of heart disease at Sawtelle Veterans Hospital.

I cannot help but wonder how my great-grandfather was able to remain in the Union Army, and in good standing, if he had ( or had had, or was at least treated for) syphilis, and how, if he had, or had had, syphilis, he managed to live a healthy life thereafter, and without infecting his wife with syphilis or having syphilitic babies. Anyone know how this could be? Thanks in advance for information!

[defacto7]

1. I'm not a doctor, but from my history studies

there are syphilis hosts and syphilis sensitive people. The hosts can carry it all their life without effects or minor ones. Others are susceptible to the effects. It can depend on where the virus settles whether it can be fast acting or take years. Maybe your relatives are resistant hosts and never had problems. The hosts can pass it though.

[frogmarch]

3. Thanks, now I have somewhere

to start. Not any of his descendants were diagnosed with syphilis, or, as far as I know, were carriers.

With syphilis on his medical record, it does surprise me he wasn't discharged, though.

[defacto7]

5. One example of this was the composer

Benjamin Britten who died of syphilis complications where his partner for life Peter Pears never showed signs. Pears was always a person of multiple partners but Britten was not as far as we know. Pears is thought to have been the host. There's a lot of cover-up in this story but the evidence doesnt follow the rhetoric. There are quite a few examples in music history.

[frogmarch]

9. That is weird. I had no idea

that this kind of thing could happen.

[defacto7]

6. Maybe they were looking for active syphilis

with lesions that can spread it by touch. Just a thought. Many carry it for years without the active signs.

[frogmarch]

10. Well, there's a thought. Maybe my ggf

was in an early stage and the treatment kept it from going full-blown with active signs.

[Warpy]

8. It was only a mild rash in most of the Americas

and limited to a skin disease that kids passed around to each other, got over, and were then immune to.

It mutated into the deadly STD form in the port cities of Europe and had been there at least since Roman times.

[frogmarch]

11. I had no idea. I thought

syphilis was always a deadly STD. Also, I didn't know it ever appeared as just a minor rash and that people who got it could become immune to syphilis.

[Warpy]

13. Here is an interesting documentary on it

mostly covering the skeletons they found in England but with the other information, as well, such as how and why it mutated into a killer.

The reason it was ignored for so long in Europe is that most people died before the really awful part of the disease could manifest. You diddled a prostitute, you got a big sore on or near your willie, then you got over it. The long suffering wife might miscarry in the beginning, but that was usually the end of it. The latent period is a long one. Physicians (such as they were) could recognize it in the early stage, but it wasn't until people started to live longer that the whole disease course was better described.

[frogmarch]

17. I'll bookmark to watch later today. Thanks!

[Seedersandleechers]

2. Apparently not all syphillis cases were obtained from carnal pleasure.

"Certainly, most cases of syphilis contracted during the war were, so to say, orthodox. Sex workers were common in stations and occupied cities, and the last worry on a soldier’s mind in that moment were venereal diseases. There were those unlucky enough, however, to contract the horribly painful disease through a self-inflicted wound rather than carnal pleasure."


http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-civil-war-soldiers-gave-themselves-syphilis-while-trying-to-avoid-smallpox

[frogmarch]

4. OMG!

Thank you for the link! Wow, what an eye-opener that article is! Shocking.

(I didn't know President Lincoln had contracted smallpox during the war.)

[Warpy]

14. Nope, touch an open chancre with broken skin, you got it too.

Horrible disease. For too long, the treatments were poisonous metals, either mercury or arsenic. They were almost worse than the disease. Almost.

[Warpy]

7. I had a grand aunt who was given her dose by her returning hero

after WWI. When penicillin came out, she was treated and missed all the lesions eating into her bones but it left her goofy. Now that side family was always nuts, even by Irish standards, so no one else ever seemed to notice, not even when she made herself a nun's habit (and one for her daughter) and started to wander the streets of Albany with beads and bible in hand.

I later had a patient, a little old lady who'd probably gotten it from her conquering hero after WWII and not known what it was and so was never treated. Paresis put her into a permanent happy drunk. We had to talk her into treatment, she was terrified to lose the high.

I have to wonder what the streets were like in the bad old days during the period of giddiness before horrific, deep, and putrid sores that must have been a hideously painful way to go started to appear.

At least now the Native Americans are off the hook. They have found the typical lesions in skeletons at Pompeii and in a hospice burial at a monastery in England.

[frogmarch]

12. I knew about syphilis goofiness, but

I'd never heard a real-life story about it. Goofiness is one thing, but I didn't know about the "happy drunk" effect. Any kind of goofiness sounds a lot better than the putrid sores stage, that's for sure!

Is it OK to chuckle about your great-aunt and her nun's habit? I'm ashamed to say it, but on the surface, it's funny.

[Warpy]

16. That's one of the milder stories

and that whole side of the family was completely wacky, paretic or not.

[No Vested Interest]

15. I love your headline. - Sure to get many clicks from those with no interest whatsoever

in genealogy!