Syphilis, Sex and Psychiatry, 1789–1925: Part 2

Objectives: Syphilis has changed the course of history, shaped the path of medicine and had more influence on psychiatry than any other illness. This paper, part two of a two-part series, investigates the historical, social and cultural aspects of the interaction of syphilis and psychiatry. Conclusion: By the end of the 19th century, social changes such as population growth, mass migration from Eastern Europe and technological developments led to a great rise in syphilis. By 1900, it was estimated that 5–20% of the population of Europe and the USA had, or would have, syphilis. By 1914, there were over 100 000 new cases and 3 million cases of syphilis in Great Britain. There was a constant interaction between syphilis, prostitution and sexual crime; it was the likely motivation for the Jack the Ripper murders, if not many in the next century. The idea of hereditary syphilis fitted perfectly into the theory of degeneration and coursed through psychiatry and caught the attention of Adolf Hitler, facilitating his antisemitic paranoia. Psychiatric progress passed to the German school, led by Kraepelin who did his first research into the symptoms and course of neurosyphilis. In 1906, W