Story of Syphilis Through the Ages - Lena H Brennand & Cat Irving - Zoom

Plagues of Passion: A History of Herpes, Syphilis, Gonorrhoea, Chlamydia, Hepatitis & HIV — A 6- Part Lecture Series Exploring the Dark Intimacies of Disease

Lecture One - Pox and Prejudice: The Story of Syphilis Through the Ages

From the whispered shame of ancient courtesans to the bio-political battlegrounds of the 20th century, this gripping lecture series traces the strange and scandalous journeys of five of history’s most infamous sexually transmitted infections: Herpes, Syphilis, Gonorrhoea, Chlamydia, Hepatitis, and HIV.

Uncover how these infections shaped empires, influenced religion and morality, inspired grotesque treatments and cruel laws — and gave rise to some of the most groundbreaking medical breakthroughs of the modern age. With each session focusing on one disease, we’ll dive into its origin myths, sociocultural impact, evolving medical responses, and the enduring human stories behind the statistics.

Expect mummified syphilitics, Cold War paranoia, ancient Egyptian condoms, tabloid fearmongering, wartime brothels, queer resistance, blood politics, and the science of stigma.

History has never been this intimate.

Speaker Bio

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience, Lena's New Book - Mythical Creatures in Scandinavian Folklore is now available on Amazon

Speaker Bio:

Cat Irving has been the Human Remains Conservator for Surgeons’ Hall since 2015 and has been caring for anatomical and pathological museum collections for over twenty years. After a degree in Anatomical Science she began removing brains and sewing up bodies at the Edinburgh City Mortuary. Following training in the care of wet tissue collections at the Royal College of Surgeons of England she worked with the preparations of William Hunter at the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow University, where she is now Consultant Human Remains Conservator. Cat is a licensed anatomist, and gives regular talks on anatomy and medical history. She recently carried out conservation work on the skeleton of serial killer William Burke

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