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Sexual health

Sexual health transcript

**Right sensor activated**

(EERIE WIND. A MALE CHOIR SING IN A LARGE CATHEDRAL)

EUROPEAN MAN IN HIS FIFTIES: Now a cruel condition about which I have a dread of speaking, also a horrible and spotting and a death-bringing disease has been sent by France. The damage grows everywhere. Even on our bodies one sees much disease. Many try to give medicines and to salve the body, but believe this - that the medicines which one uses primarily often do harm. Many wish to die as soon as possible, so badly does the inner pus of the rotting blood hurt them. It burns, punches and pricks them, inflames, tortures and itches with all kinds of pains, and torments them. Therefore, we beg for pity from the higher powers of the heavens and go to the altars and beg God for peace. May our devout prayer reach the Virgin Mary. 

Since no doctor of medicine can discover the causes of this illness, I turn to the astronomers and to the teachers of the arts of the stars. On the whole, all the people who, at their birth, had Jupiter as a ruling planet are more subject to this French evil. The smell comes from the uncleanliness of Saturn, which is a planet of uncleanliness and stinks. Therefore, melancholy appears in the sickness as one cause. Then the great heat comes from Mars, which is a planet of kindling, for the pox tortures people so that many wish for death. One should flee from the following things: in the first place a public bath into which many different people come. Abstain from much eating and drinking. One should keep away from women because this sickness is easily aroused by that.

(A DEEP RUMBLING. THE CHOIR CONTINUES)

**END**

 

**Left sensor activated**

(A HARPSICORD PLAYS)

A MIDDLE-AGED EDUCATED ENGLISHMAN: I think no instance can be produced where this disease was eradicated any other way than by salivation with mercury. I prescribe an ointment made of two ounces of lard and one ounce of quicksilver. But I order that the sick anoint with his own hand his arms, thighs and legs three nights following. But he must neither touch his groins nor his armpits, and his belly must be carefully defended from the ointment.

(MUTTERING CROWD)

(BANGING OF A GAVEL)

YOUNG PROFESSIONAL ENGLISHMAN: Trials for adultery. Martha Robinson against Samuel Robinson. Libel given 26th of January, 1775. That Martha Robinson was and is a person of mild, affable and obliging temper. The said Samuel Robinson, being of cruel disposition, did frequently ill-treat and abuse his said wife, and kept company with diverse lewd, wicked and debauched women who were reputed to be common women of the town. That the said Samuel Robinson twice communicated the said foul distemper or venereal disease to his wife and took her to a physician or surgeon for the cure. That on or about the month of September 1769, the said Martha Robinson was so ill that she was given over as a lost person by the physician and surgeon.

(THE MUTTERING CONTINUES. THE GAVEL BANGS SWIFTLY THREE TIMES)

AMERICAN MAN WITH DEEP SOUTHERN ACCENT: The bones of his legs are rough to the feel, his throat sore. Copper-coloured spots exist on the body and on the head, and he has two or three deep sores on the scrotum. His wife had, as often happens here, miscarried with her first child 12 months ago, and one just born was covered with copper-coloured spots. It died as the children suffering with this symptom generally do. Among those English practitioners who believe in the efficacy of mercury, Lewin considers that the syphilitic symptoms disappear more rapidly when mercurial injections are used. The writer’s opinion is that it should not be employed except in cases of primary and secondary syphilis in patients of strong constitutions.

(IN THE DISTANCE A DOG YAPS. THE HOOT OF AN OWL)

**END**