Sores, sweat and secretions: the pox in early modern London

In early modern London, no one wanted to admit to having the pox. With sinful associations and excruciating symptoms, the pox came with shame, pain, and silence. So how do you study a disease that nobody ever admitted to having? Well, Olivia Weiser has done just that, and in this episode of the History Extra podcast, she speaks to Charlotte Vosper about the pox-ridden world of early modern London. So I think we should start by asking, what is the pox?

You know, what disease are we talking about here? I think the easiest answer would be that it's most likely what we call syphilis. The more complicated answer is we don't really know what it is. The pox or venereal disease was this umbrella term that was used to talk about all sorts of diseases that we now differentiate, such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis.

We know we have these modern disease categories. They didn't have those categories at the time and they obviously didn't have bacteriology or a way of testing. So the ways they define disease was by symptoms. And they were kind of batched under this pretty expansive umbrella of venereal disease or the pox.

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