The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #140832 Message #3736760
Posted By: Jack Campin
11-Sep-15 - 09:47 AM
Thread Name: George Collins Is Innocent!
Subject: RE: George Collins Is Innocent!
I looked at a catalogue of the museum at the Royal College of Surgeons this week, which had a picture of a skull with syphilitic osteitis - the outer layer of bone has completely disintegrated and there are deep splits right through the skull as if it had been chopped up with a cleaver. That image isn't on the web, but some only slightly less dramatic ones are:
Alexis Thomson: Manual of Surgery, 6th ed
McCrae Collection specimen
You'd certainly take to your bed with a headache if that happened to you. (The distinctive thing about the earliest years of syphilis, before 1510, is that it happened much faster).