Erin Welsh

Thinking about the number of advertisements that you found and this map, this beautiful map that you made, I just love it so much.

I think it also just shows that it was kind of a good business model to go into this.

At 20% of a lifetime risk of developing venereal disease, that means a lot of cures are going to be sold.

I mean, yeah, I mean, competition must have been quite stiff.

And with so many different people out there, you had to stand out in some way or another.

But then there was also, as you said, this flip side of people who were making home remedies based off of recipes.

What do these recipes look like?

Not in terms of like what ingredients were there, but where were they found?

What types of books or were they just scraps of paper?

How would someone come across this knowledge?

You touched a bit on this in terms of who would be able to go out and buy a cure versus treat at home.

But who did have the resources and the know-how who had these access to these recipe books to make these at-home remedies?

A lot of this diagnosis, it seems to be self-diagnosed.

People were recognizing symptoms in themselves and then saying, OK, I think I have this.

I'm going to go find treatment myself.

But then there were some people who consulted or who had access or were able to consult a physician.

And it was very striking and not surprising necessarily, I think, given the time, but like how physicians almost seem to operate on the basis of assuming that their patient was lying about what was going on.

Can you tell me more about what that experience would be like from a patient perspective who goes and consults with a doctor about symptoms of venereal disease that they're not sure what they are?

Right, which is then part of that is like, well, I am an excellent doctor because I saw past the patient's lies and their efforts to conceal.

Exactly.