Erin Welsh

Hi, I'm Erin Welsh, and this is This Podcast Will Kill You.

Welcome to the TPWKY Book Club, a series where I invite authors of popular science and medicine books to the show to chat with me about their latest work.

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Londoners in the 17th and 18th centuries were no strangers to infectious disease.

Plague, tuberculosis, typhus, measles, and smallpox all reared their pestilential heads at some point or another.

But alongside these well-known and highly broadcast afflictions lurked another disease, so feared and so stigmatized that it was sometimes known as the secret disease.

We know it today as syphilis.

Syphilis, or the pox as it was also called, was among the most feared diagnoses in early modern London.

not just because there were no effective cures and it could lead to painful sores or even death.

If your pox infection became public knowledge, you would likely face deep stigma and shame.