Quoted By:
It's funny. Maria's ASMR reminded me of how ancient syphilis was actually very similar to Ebola. It made you bleed uncontrollably from every orifice as your insides literally liquified, and then you died like 3 days later. It's native to Mexico and the Spanish talked about it like we talk about Montezuma's Revenge today, if Montezuma's Revenge had a 50%+ fatality rate and made you die in excruciating agony. It turning into a slow-acting STD was an evolutionary response to the fact that it killed people too quickly and spectacularly to efficiently spread among large populations. Though syphilis still kills you if it's untreated. People throughout the Enlightenment treated it like we treat AIDS today: a fatal disease that kills you over the course of many decades, but which you won't know about until youve already passed it to many many others because of how long it stays asymptomatic, and is primarily spread among prostitutes and the extremely sexually promiscuous. It's theorized that King George II suffered from it, which is why he suddenly started making tons of insane decisions during the American Revolutionary War, since going schizo is one of the symptoms. Aren't ancient diseases fun?
