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Study Reveals Just How Bad Syphilis Got in London in The Late 18th Century
ScienceAlert ^ | July 11, 2020 | David Nield

Posted on 07/14/2020 9:30:21 AM PDT by C19fan

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Georgian London was Sin City. Prostitution was rife and the upper classes slept around. Wilberforce fought to stop slavery and fight for the "reformation of manners". I heard wigs became fashionable because so many of the upper crust of society caught syphilis and needed to wear wigs to cover the hair loss.
1 posted on 07/14/2020 9:30:21 AM PDT by C19fan
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To: C19fan

Wow, there was lots of VD going around in those days. The spread of VD is hardly a new development.


2 posted on 07/14/2020 9:34:48 AM PDT by Dilbert San Diego
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To: C19fan
A quote I use in my music history courses:

"Widespread and unchecked until the discovery of penicillin, syphilis was a scourge that accounted for many premature deaths, and several composers are known or strongly believed to have contracted it, including [Robert] Schumann. Other famous [composer] syphilitics were Franz Schubert, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Gaspare Spontini, Gaetano Donizetti, Mikhail Glinka, Bedrich Smetana, Hugo Wolf, Frederick Delius, Edward Macdowell, and Scott Joplin, and their symptoms ranged from lesions and fevers to blindness, deafness, dementia, and death."

http://www.allmusic.com/blog/post/classical-composers-and-their-maladies

3 posted on 07/14/2020 9:37:26 AM PDT by chajin ("There is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12)
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To: chajin

Musicians haven’t changed much over the years! :)


4 posted on 07/14/2020 9:41:47 AM PDT by Skywise
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To: C19fan

No wonder they lost the Revolutionary War!


5 posted on 07/14/2020 9:41:59 AM PDT by TruthWillWin
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To: C19fan

They had good times for long times.

Well, not so long.


6 posted on 07/14/2020 9:45:15 AM PDT by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is thp at they are both death cults.)
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To: C19fan

Let’s see.....

Lots of Englishmen going around the world and coming back to London.


7 posted on 07/14/2020 9:45:59 AM PDT by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer”)
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To: C19fan
Georgian London was Sin City. Prostitution was rife and the upper classes slept around. Wilberforce fought to stop slavery and fight for the "reformation of manners". I heard wigs became fashionable because so many of the upper crust of society caught syphilis and needed to wear wigs to cover the hair loss.

Certainly. Add to it that London was the seaport to the world with disease vectors getting on and off each ship.

8 posted on 07/14/2020 9:46:21 AM PDT by T.B. Yoits
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To: C19fan

Two other reasons for wigs were (1) Having an expensive wig displayed conpicious consumption and marked one of status, at the same time forcing the upper classes to spend huge sums for elaborate wigs, siphoned away their money which might otherwise be used for rebellious mischief, like the Fronde in Louie XIV’s time, (2) effective cheap, shampoos were not available until the middle of the 19th Century when German chemists developed them. It was far easier to wear a wig and shave your hair or keep it close cropped to keep your head clean, just as the ancient Egyptians did.


9 posted on 07/14/2020 10:05:50 AM PDT by PUGACHEV
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To: C19fan

And still, to this day, there has never been a double blind study on the cure of Syphilis. Tell Fauxi to get right on that.


10 posted on 07/14/2020 10:09:35 AM PDT by angmo (America invented the Moon, so we could go there.)
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To: C19fan

“As many as one in five Londoners had syphilis by their mid-30s”

About the same ratio as women in NYC today...nothing ever changes.


11 posted on 07/14/2020 10:10:27 AM PDT by BobL
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To: C19fan

Also putting makeup on to cover the sore outbreaks on the face.


12 posted on 07/14/2020 10:12:51 AM PDT by Morpheus2009 (If you want me to be afraid, then be consistent in your logic, standards, and your lies!)
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To: TruthWillWin
No wonder they lost the Revolutionary War! In Sunday School in the mid-1990's, our teacher explained to us that England during the Revolution was a morally reprehensible place. We caught G. britain at the right time to break from them. It was before the Wesleyan revival had truly taken hold, and the leadership in both the Army and Navy was generally weak and incompetent (how else would explain the Colonial success against the Royal Navy during the war?).

Nobility was engaged in drunkenness, wife-swapping, prostitution was rife. The British mocked the colonists as a bunch of religious bible-thumpers because we were morally strict for the times.

We had a tougher time with the british in the War of 1812, because the nation had more fully embraced Christianity, and it's people weren't as debauched. We were lucky that GB didn't take us back over.

13 posted on 07/14/2020 10:12:55 AM PDT by MuttTheHoople (What if the Lord sen9t COVID-19 to immunize the world from something more deadly?)
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To: MuttTheHoople

wife-swapping? WHAT?!!!


14 posted on 07/14/2020 10:16:53 AM PDT by Morpheus2009 (If you want me to be afraid, then be consistent in your logic, standards, and your lies!)
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To: MuttTheHoople
Thanks for the history lession.

I was sorta joking but sounds like I was accurate.

15 posted on 07/14/2020 10:17:10 AM PDT by TruthWillWin
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To: C19fan

And the British sailors brought that shit to Hawaii and infected the Hawaiians. Hawaiian women were the easiest and friendliest on Earth , they were sitting ducks. Zero knowledge about any such matters. And the men did not give a damn .


16 posted on 07/14/2020 10:18:27 AM PDT by LeoWindhorse
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To: chajin

Glad to see that P. D. Q. Bach is not on the list.


17 posted on 07/14/2020 10:25:41 AM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: Verginius Rufus

P. D. Q. Bach’s dementia must have been due to something else, then.


18 posted on 07/14/2020 10:46:52 AM PDT by HartleyMBaldwin
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To: C19fan

Even as early as 1740, the famous fictional villain Robert Lovelace, legendary seducer of women, only went after virgins because he was afraid of getting the pox.


19 posted on 07/14/2020 10:47:16 AM PDT by A_perfect_lady (The greatest wealth is to live content with little. -Plato)
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To: MuttTheHoople

The British mocked the colonists as a bunch of religious bible-thumpers because we were morally strict for the times.
*******************
Isn’t that exactly what the Europeans have claimed Americans are for over a century, “bible-thumpers”.


20 posted on 07/14/2020 10:52:44 AM PDT by Yulee
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