If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home by Lucy Worsley Page A
Authors: Lucy Worsley
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dangerous decline. ‘Social customs and traditions are altering rapidly in a most undesirable direction,’ thundered theauthor of The Changing Moral Standard , as ‘girls, unmarried women and young married women of all classes’ had started behaving like prostitutes. In the early twentieth century, the arguments of campaigners against gonorrhoea shaded into eugenics. One pamphlet issued by the National Council for Combating Venereal Diseases claimed that couples who wanted to marry should obtain approval from a priest and a lawyer, but also from a doctor: ‘surely there can be no sanctity in any marriage unless blood-cleanness and freedom from infectivity are regarded as essentials?’ A printed warning issued to soldiers proposed a more practical solution to the problem of venereal disease: a visit to ‘special treatment centres … where examination is SECRET, FREE OF CHARGE, and CARRIED OUT BY EXPERT DOCTORS’. (People could find the location of their nearest centre by asking a policeman.)
An old procuress, with patches covering up her pox, takes an innocent country girl under her wing
Syphilis first reached Europe from the New World late in the fifteenth century, and then spread rampantly through sexual contact. It could not be transmitted through the air, even though the over-powerful Cardinal Wolsey was accused of having ‘breathed’ syphilis over Henry VIII. While the humour-based concept of medicine still reigned, the recommended treatment was with mercury. (‘Five minutes with Venus may mean a lifetime with Mercury.’) The intention was to make the body sweat excessively, which would restore equilibrium. Syringes for injecting mercury into the urethra sank with the Mary Rose in 1545, to be rescued by modern divers. Otherwise a mercury ointment could be rubbed onto the skin, and there were even bizarre anti-venereal underpants coated with the chemical. The mercury did indeed cause a patient to sweat, but the resultant black saliva thought to indicate that the treatment was working was in fact a symptom of advanced mercury poisoning.
It’s often been suggested that Henry VIII’s various health troubles were caused by syphilis, and he did indeed make potions and salves of his own devising ‘to dry excoriations and comfort the member’. But at no point did he disappear from public life for the standard six-week mercury treatment, as did his French contemporary, Francis I. So the case seems unproven. (Syphilis, known in England as ‘the French disease’, was called ‘the English disease’ in France. The other conditions thought abroad to be peculiarly English were flagellation, suicide and bronchitis.)
Anyone using a prostitute in seventeenth- or eighteenth-century London would have run a high risk of getting venereal disease. ‘A Whore’, asserted one moraliser, making a good point but in a particularly unpleasant way, ‘is but a Close-Stool … that receives all manner of filth, she’s like a Barber’s Chair, nosooner one’s out, but t’others in.’ No wonder James Boswell, after his visit from ‘Signor Gonorrhoea’, reluctantly decided to try the reusable animal-gut condoms that were increasingly available.
Some of the saddest syphilis cases were the wives and children infected by straying husbands. But most heart-rending of all were the victims of the strange and horrible Georgian idea that a man could get rid of his syphilis by having intercourse with a small child, even a baby. His young partner would remove his disease, it was thought, leaving him clean and cured.
Since the 1950s, it’s been easier to control syphilis, and if detected early, the patient will make a full recovery. But be warned: the numbers of new cases being reported today are on the rise!
11 – What to Wear in Bed
What do I wear in bed? Why, Chanel No. 5, of course.
Marilyn Monroe
As bedrooms were communal places throughout so much of their history, people were used to being seen in their night-clothes.
An old procuress, with patches covering up her pox, takes an innocent country girl under her wing
Syphilis first reached Europe from the New World late in the fifteenth century, and then spread rampantly through sexual contact. It could not be transmitted through the air, even though the over-powerful Cardinal Wolsey was accused of having ‘breathed’ syphilis over Henry VIII. While the humour-based concept of medicine still reigned, the recommended treatment was with mercury. (‘Five minutes with Venus may mean a lifetime with Mercury.’) The intention was to make the body sweat excessively, which would restore equilibrium. Syringes for injecting mercury into the urethra sank with the Mary Rose in 1545, to be rescued by modern divers. Otherwise a mercury ointment could be rubbed onto the skin, and there were even bizarre anti-venereal underpants coated with the chemical. The mercury did indeed cause a patient to sweat, but the resultant black saliva thought to indicate that the treatment was working was in fact a symptom of advanced mercury poisoning.
It’s often been suggested that Henry VIII’s various health troubles were caused by syphilis, and he did indeed make potions and salves of his own devising ‘to dry excoriations and comfort the member’. But at no point did he disappear from public life for the standard six-week mercury treatment, as did his French contemporary, Francis I. So the case seems unproven. (Syphilis, known in England as ‘the French disease’, was called ‘the English disease’ in France. The other conditions thought abroad to be peculiarly English were flagellation, suicide and bronchitis.)
Anyone using a prostitute in seventeenth- or eighteenth-century London would have run a high risk of getting venereal disease. ‘A Whore’, asserted one moraliser, making a good point but in a particularly unpleasant way, ‘is but a Close-Stool … that receives all manner of filth, she’s like a Barber’s Chair, nosooner one’s out, but t’others in.’ No wonder James Boswell, after his visit from ‘Signor Gonorrhoea’, reluctantly decided to try the reusable animal-gut condoms that were increasingly available.
Some of the saddest syphilis cases were the wives and children infected by straying husbands. But most heart-rending of all were the victims of the strange and horrible Georgian idea that a man could get rid of his syphilis by having intercourse with a small child, even a baby. His young partner would remove his disease, it was thought, leaving him clean and cured.
Since the 1950s, it’s been easier to control syphilis, and if detected early, the patient will make a full recovery. But be warned: the numbers of new cases being reported today are on the rise!
11 – What to Wear in Bed
What do I wear in bed? Why, Chanel No. 5, of course.
Marilyn Monroe
As bedrooms were communal places throughout so much of their history, people were used to being seen in their night-clothes.
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