A woman with syphilis is photographed before penicillin was invented, 1890s

Awoman with syphilis is photographed before penicillin was invented, 1890s.

In the Victorian era, rampant disease kept life expectancies low while high photography costs kept most people from ever having their picture taken. So when adults and especially young children died without ever sitting for a picture, their family would often dress and pose the corpse in a lifelike way before inviting a photographer over to have a portrait taken with the departed. 

From postmortem photos to those taken of the living, see more of the most haunting portraits of the Victorian era — 

.The first recorded outbreak of syphilis in Europe occurred in 1494/1495 in Naples, Italy, during a French invasion.Because it was spread by returning French troops, the disease was known as "French disease", and it was not until 1530 that the term "syphilis" was first applied by the Italian physician and poet Girolamo Fracastoro. 

The causative organism, Treponema pallidum, was first identified by Fritz Schaudinn and Erich Hoffmann in 1905. The first effective treatment, Salvarsan, was developed in 1910 by Sahachiro Hata in the laboratory of Paul Ehrlich. It was followed by the introduction of penicillin in 1943.

Many well-known figures, including Scott Joplin, Franz Schubert, Friedrich Nietzsche, Al Capone, and Édouard Manet are believed to have contracted the disease.

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