AN OLD FOE

The answer to the pics I posted in my last entry was syphilis. Specifically, Secondary Syphilis, a disease probably as old as mother earth itself. Below is a nice way of remembering all the salient features of the disease.


There was a young man from Back Bay
Who thought syphilis just went away
He believed that a chancre
Was only a canker
That healed in a week and a day.

But now he has “acne vulgaris”—
(Or whatever they call it in Paris);
On his skin it has spread
From his feet to his head,
And his friends want to know where his hair is.

There's more to his terrible plight:
His pupils won't close in the light
His heart is cavorting,
His wife is aborting,
And he squints through his gunbarrel sight.

Arthralgia cuts into his slumber;
His aorta is in need of a plumber;
But now he has tabes,
And sabershinned babies,
While of gummas he has quite a number.

He's been treated in every known way,
But his spirochetes grow day by day;
He's developed paresis,
Has long talks with Jesus,
And thinks he's the Queen of the May.

Anonymous poem, 1920s