The History of Sex: Venice and Florence -- Syphilis and Biology Gone Bad -- (Chap. IV, Pt. 22)

The surgeon to Pope Julius II (possibly the first syphilitic pontiff) worked out that mercury ointment helped, though he also advocated fumigation: encasing the victim in a box and lighting a fire underneath to vaporize the liquid metal—a 'cure' that could very well kill the patient.

Nevertheless, quicksilver soon became the treatment of choice, inspiring the pun that 'a night in the arms of Venus leads to a lifetime on Mercury'—even if you didn't have syphilis.

One of the most tragic mistakes in the history of medicine involved the misdiagnosis of gonorrhea as an early form of syphilis: doctors mistook the clap for the pox, ditching old treatments that worked on gonorrhea to switch to mercury, which didn't.

Gonorrhea rates skyrocketed, sterilizing women and blinding babies.

Meanwhile, mercury wasn't a sure-fire cure for syphilitics, either.

Manet, the painter of Olympia, was one of countless whoremongers who succumbed to syphilis over the centuries, along with the many wives who caught it from their partners and passed it on to their congenitally deformed children.

THE 'FACE' OF SYPHILIS

A truly epic disease, syphilis manifested itself across generations in three stages, starting with malevolent-looking sores that didn't bleed or hurt but were highly contagious, followed by an equally infectious rash weeks later, headaches, fever and hair loss.

After months and even years of latency, truly unfortunate victims would enter the final phase, typified by tumor-like lesions on the skin and bones, heart problems, seizures and dementia.

Oh, and their noses would collapse.

After all that, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the conclusion of my trip is a bit of a letdown.

It's probably wrong of me, but I've been expecting to see life-sized examples of biology gone bad: in short, I want to see the 'face' of syphilis.

What I find are four small, apocalyptic tableaux by a Sicilian who lived in the late 1600s, roughly a century before the other waxworks in La Specola were created.

Judging from his surviving works—all of which are in this room—Gaetano Zumbo must have been more than a tad morbid.

The Plague, The Triumph of Time, The Corruption of the Body, and The French Disease are all miniature vignettes of suffering, featuring piles of gangrenous corpses, diseased men and women grieving over loved ones, and the odd baby trying to suckle at its dead mother's breast.