h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Peter.
I've not been on the site recently as I've been doing a lot of work to try and recover pensions for people whose company has gone bust.

I have seen your comments on my father's story. I recognise that this is a taboo subject and feelings run high. Reg was also concerned it might offend people.
I'll reply in full in the right place later but rest assured that venereal disease was rampant in all armed forces of all countries in both WW2 and WW1. It's been around for thousands of years.
No insult to Italian people is intended and please do not feel personally offended.

I share your interest in ensuring factual correctness but
I'm also certain penicillin was available in Malta at the required date.


best wishes

paul

Paul

I am fully aware of the prevalence of VD and the history of syphilis. It was unknown in Europe until the discovery of America, being first known in Europe in 1493-9. This was later disputed but the consensus of medical opinion now is that it developed in the New World from Yaws about 1,600 years ago. VD in general, and syphilis in particular, may well be a taboo subject for many but it certainly isn't for me. I am aware of the syphilis epidemic of the 15th century and the ravages it caused, spread by mercenary troops it became known as the 'French Disease' and in England as the 'pox' - syphilis was known as the great pox, small pox being what we now call smallpox; second stage syphilis rash looking much like primary smallpox pustules. Interestingly the Tahitians called it 'Apa no Brittania' - the British disease.

I am also conversant with the mutations of the disease and how it gradually became less virulent over the next 200 years. By the 18th century it had become less prevalent. If you look at the autobiographies of two eighteen century philanderers: Casanova and Boswell you will see that they had no qualms whatsoever in discussing VD (or STD as it now called). If you look at the full autobiography of Casanova (the full 12 volume edition, not bowdlerdised versions) he faithfully records the many times he caught the clap (gonorrhoea), so does Boswell, but neither despite extremely active promiscuous sexual lives ever caught syphilis. The most detailed authentic sexual life of the 19th century is the 12 volumes "My Secret Life" by 'Walter' (believed by many to be Henry Spencer Ashbee). Again he records when he gets 'the clap' and is always worried about syphilis, but he never catches it. And his activities were not just confined to London, being wealthy he travelled extensively on the continent including Italy. The point of all this is that it is not nor was it ever, apart from the 16th century, as widespread and frequent in Europe as your story implies. A second epidemic occurred after the second world war. The rate of syphilis peaked in the USA in 1947 at 106,000 cases, out of a then total population of 150 million.

If you look at the statistics for syphilis you will see that they cannot be expressed in a single decimal place percentage, if you did the result would always be 0.0%. The incidence of syphilitic frequency in a population is always expressed as a number per 100,000. In the early 1990s there was an inexplicable surge in the United States when in some states it reached 11.4 per 100,000, but generally it is of the order of 2.4 I have chosen the USA because the incidence is higher than Europe, the current WHO figure for Italy is 0.2 and for the UK 3.0, both per 100,000. Of course figures would have been higher before penicillin was discovered and I can find no statistics for pre-WW2 Europe. However figures are available for third-world countries where medication is not available: the prevalence rates in the Eastern Mediterranean Region amongst pregnant women in 1997 showed syphilis infection rates of 3.1% in Djibouti followed by Morocco (3.0%) and Sudan
(2.4%). It is utterly inconceivable that the rates were higher in pre-war Europe, and in Italy in particular, before the war. Yet your story implies that syphilis was rampant in the Italian Fleet from ratings to senior officers.

The most notorious Red Light areas for sailors were the Gut in Valletta; the old quarter of Alexandria; Port Said harbour district; and the Wanchai area of Victoria in Hong Kong; there was no medical supervision and VD was rampant in these notorious fleshpots - but none of these ports was accessible to the Italian navy. Italy had state controlled brothels until they were abolished in 1946; these were under strict medical supervision. In Italy a 'casino' was originally a brothel, not a gaming house. The local brothel in Luino Valtravaglia, which I knew well, was 'Mamma Rosa'; after 1943 it was closed to civilians and reserved solely for German troops. Yet I have never heard it even remotely claimed that the SS or the Wehrmacht was riddled with syphilis. If things were so bad in the navy, how do you explain the extremely low incidence of VD amongst Italian PoWs? Italian soldiers have been accused of being incompetent, badly led, and badly organised, but I have yet to hear that it was also pox-ridden.

You also imply that treatment for syphilis was one of the conditions negotiated for the surrender of the fleet, but that simply was not the case. You can read the instrument of surrender here, there are no hidden clauses: http://www.geocities.com/wcdproject/html/documenti_14.html The Badoglio government initially tried to negotiate some terms but were told that it had to be unconditional surrender and that no terms were open to any negotiation, following the joint Casablanca Declaration.

You say that "Reg was also concerned it might offend people. ... No insult to Italian people is intended and please do not feel personally offended". But this implies that the story is true, although Italians may find it unpalatable. Contrary to this, I am saying that the story simply does not stand up to scrutiny. If the Italian navy was so highly syphilitic it also follows that large sections of Italian society were too, including the wives and sweethearts of the men of all ranks, from the very highest to the lowest. One wonders how they all managed to catch it, where Casanova, Boswell, and Ashbee had conspicuously failed.

Peter