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The effects were horrific of STDs before penicillin noses disappeared. faces and heads covered in massive sores.. things we never see in any old movies about the past.. some STDs affected walking too. . STDs can have severe, life-changing consequences; syphilis, for example, can eventually cause progressive destruction of the brain and spinal cord, leading to mental dysfunction and hallucinations, speech problems and general paresis. In the 18th and 19th centuries, mercury, arsenic and sulphur were commonly used to treat venereal disease, which often resulted in serious side effects and many people died of mercury poisoning. The first known effective treatment for syphilis called salvarsan or arsphenamine was introduced in 1910. You can see photos online quite horrific of sufferers in the past before help was available..
Syphillis killed Al Capone..........it started his medical issues that ended up killing him
Which is precisely why Christianity was so strict about no sex before/outside of marriage. If you and your spouse only ever have sex with each other, there is really no way to get an STD. In a world with no effective condoms (which have been around since ancient times, they just weren't very effective), the only reliable way to protect against STDs was to only have sex within marriage. Just one of the many ways ancient religious beliefs aren't really relevant today.
Also an example of how some religious principles (don't eat this, don't do that, etc.) were probably just public health advice attributed to the gods to ensure compliance.
The first use of condoms were described in the 16th century by the anatomist Fallopia. He’s the guy who a certain part of the female reproductive tract are named after. They were made from pieces of sheep intestine.
Why are we talking about when the STDs appeared ??? My question is “were STD’s more common during the times of ancient Greeks/Romans” since they were sexually deviant?” By this I mean they had sex slaves, orgies, and practiced pedophilia.
There is no doubt that they were more sexually deviant than us.
Why are we talking about when the STDs appeared ??? My question is “were STD’s more common during the times of ancient Greeks/Romans” since they were sexually deviant?” By this I mean they had sex slaves, orgies, and practiced pedophilia.
There is no doubt that they were more sexually deviant than us.
Rome was not a free for all, orgies all the time situation.
Freer sexually than Christians, yes. Deviants? Not the norm.
Prostitution was legal, homosexuality was common, etc. I have never read anything that showed STDs were MORE common during this period.
Bear in mind, all those things have always occurred throughout the ages... occur now. Basically the only thing that differs is the societal acceptance. Just think of the Church, all these things are frowned upon (sin!!!), yet they still do it, and it is not uncommon.
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Why are we talking about when the STDs appeared ??? My question is “were STD’s more common during the times of ancient Greeks/Romans” since they were sexually deviant?” By this I mean they had sex slaves, orgies, and practiced pedophilia.
There is no doubt that they were more sexually deviant than us.
As I and others have pointed out, the "deviant" behavior you're talking about was present in a tiny fraction of the aristocracy, which itself was a tiny fraction of the population.
The peasant farmers, slaves, artisans, soldiers, and others who made up the vast majority of the Imperial Roman populace lived, by and large, like those people have done throughout history. That means very traditional family structures, strong attention to religion, very conservative behavior.
Why are we talking about when the STDs appeared ??? My question is “were STD’s more common during the times of ancient Greeks/Romans” since they were sexually deviant?” By this I mean they had sex slaves, orgies, and practiced pedophilia.
There is no doubt that they were more sexually deviant than us.
You asked "Do you think STDs/AIDS were more common since people were so sexually liberal?" so the fact that AIDS didn't even exist in ancient times (but other STDs did) is relevant.
And your question was adequately answered on the first page. Orgies weren't necessary for STDs to spread easily - and it's not like everyone was constantly having orgies in Rome. I think you're overestimating how common it was, or how much influence it would have had on the spread of STDs.
Also, having an orgy doesn't make one a "sexual deviant". It now feels like you have some kind of ulterior motive for asking this - like orgies leading to more STDs is proof of how immoral they are. I'm not sure lumping orgies (at least, consensual ones) in with slavery and pedophilia is fair.
We have evidence of periodic breakouts of diseases in the ancient world that sound an awful lot like our STDs. Genital discharge, warts, lesions, rashes, pustules, blisters, all kinds of breakouts, etc... Sounds like our STDs.
The word gonorrhea derives from Greek and we have evidence the Greeks got something that sounds like the same thing. Ancient Egyptians described a disease of the genital area that sounds like herpes. Ancient Indians and Chinese also described things like that. So yeah, they had STDs.
Syphilllis we think came from the Americas and did not appear until after Native American contact. Chlamydia has been tracked to the late 19th century.
We know bestiality was a thing in the ancient world, so it's likely some STDs jumped to humans from that activity.
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