In ancient times, before they had time to detect slow wasting diseases such as syphilis, chlamydia, and etc...

Question

Is it possible that actually a huge amount of the human populations actually was infected and didn't know... since these diseases is slow and rots the brain... is it possible that it affected a lot of great people in history? For example, Chairman Mao actually passed away from Syphilis. The late stages of syphilis is brain and body decay. Can these side effects of influenced their decisions? For example, Mao commanding the cultural revolution or Stalin's paranoia causing him to reign the white terror among all of Russia?

What do you think... and which figures in history? I am interested to know. Thanks!

Answer 1

Absolutely, although a quick look at their bones today could tell you exactly what they were afflicted with if the disease process affected the bones at all.  You mentioned syphilis and chlamydia, the latter of which does not show up in bone.  Syphilis however is not a man-made disease created in the lab, as was previously mentioned.  It's one of the world's most ancient diseases, along with tuberculosis and leprosy which can also be seen in bone as far as 10,000 years ago.  The reason those three were really the first to afflict humans was because 10,000 years ago humans domesticated animals and created civilization.  They picked up tuberculosis and leprosy from their livestock.  Syphilis is a little different though; with the creation of civilization came the creation of the world's oldest profession: prostitution.  It's been pretty well tracked that syphilis really only became a problem when humans settled down in cities and had time for more than just food gathering.  

To answer your question, some of the leaders you mentioned could have made some crazy decisions while afflicted with the later stages of syphilis because it does cause dementia and insanity in the end.  Paleopathology studies have shown syphilis to be quite prevalent before the discovery of penicillin, which can completely wipe out an entire infection, so before then even if people knew they had syphilis or some other degenerative disease there wasn't much to be done.  

I'm not sure which rulers you could speculate about, but I suppose you could examine any ruler exhibiting erratic behavior and question their health.  I'll post a link to a site with a list of mad monarchs that may have been victims of a disease process.

Answer 2

Yes, especially before autopsies were commonplace!

Medical technology within the past 150 years, takes away a lot of the mysteries about disease...

We have blood tests, x-rays and vaccines, just to name a few!

Nietsche also died of syphilis!

Answer 3

for starters those you mentioned were created by men in labs . and you need to realize that we all ready have every disease known to man built into our DNA and its just a matter of waking it up

Answer 4

Syphilis wasn't common in Europe until the 16thc, though there have possibly been a few medieval skeletons found that may have had it. It wasn't in ancient population of Europe