An unexpectedly fashionable career

If asked today to list fashionable careers, it is highly unlikely that any of us would include ‘syphilis specialist’ in our list. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the prevalence of the disease in British society and the ongoing debates surrounding its nature and cure provided many medical men with the opportunity to carve out very fashionable, and indeed lucrative, careers.

Medical instruments in A complete treatise on the virulent gonorrhoea, by Jacques Daran (London, 1766), University of Glasgow Library, Sp Coll NH.6.24; with permission of University of Glasgow Special Collections.

Among those who became famous for their work on the disease were two Scottish surgeons – John Hunter and Benjamin Bell. Hunter and Bell were particularly important and noted because they debated whether gonorrhea and syphilis were caused by the same pathogen.  Hunter argued for the same pathogen, whilst Bell took the position that they were separate diseases. Their work on the diseases was widely read and debated in the medical community, for instance Solomon Sawrey, a surgeon, published a book on An inquiry into some of the effects of the venereal poison on the human body; with… observations on some of the opinions of Mr. John Hunger and Mr. Benjamin Bell (1802).

John Hunter (portrait on left-hand page),  A Treatise on the Venereal Disease (London, 1810), University of Glasgow Library, Sp Coll 84.b.12; with permission of University of Glasgow Special Collections.

The London-based surgeon John Marten also appears to have carved out a successful career as a pox practitioner (despite some accusations of quackery from contemporaries!). Marten published a very popular Treatise on all degrees and symptoms of the venereal disease. The book was clearly successful, running to seven editions. However, Marten did not just seek fame and fortune through his published endeavors. He also sought these through treating the upper circles of London society for the disease. The service that he offered was clearly tailored to meet the desires of an elite clientele; he offered to meet patients in clandestine locations away from their homes and his surgery and would send letters and remedies anonymously and to alternative collection addresses rather than directly to people’s homes. This was all to help fashionable Londoners maintain a respectable facade, free from association with a disease considered immoral and associated with horrific physical suffering and disfigurement. Moreover, all of these services were mentioned in Marten’s book, thus making it a sort of extended advertisement; a way to win him more wealthy patients!

John Marten (portrait on the left-hand page), A Treatise of all the Degrees and Symptoms of the Venereal Disease (London, 1708), University of Glasgow Library, Sp Coll Hunterian Ab.6.11; with permission of University of Glasgow Special Collections.

Today we sometimes say that something is ‘to die for’, well during the eighteenth century, a successful career as a practitioner treating the pox was just that. Self-experimentation was common among medical men during this period, and some injected themselves with material extracted from the sores of venereal patients. This was undoubtedly risky, it could result in the need for months of mercury treatment, and had the potential to prove fatal. There is at least one known case of a student, who was preparing a thesis on venereal disease, dying from injecting himself with material from a pox sore.

Thus, whilst the great pox was not a fashionable disease to suffer from during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it provided many medical men with the opportunity to obtain fame and fortune. To be a pox practitioner, surgeon or doctor, was so desirable that it was literally seen as a career worth dying for.