On the border of the North York Moors, a little less than seven miles to the east of Northallerton is the village of Nether Silton. Though the population is numbered in the region of one hundred inhabitants, Nether Silton nevertheless boasts a real country pub, The Gold Cup Inn, and amongst other interesting features in All Saints Church, the altar rails are supposedly made with wood taken from HMS Dreadnought.
Yet another noteworthy feature of this sleepy Yorkshire village can be found in the field to the south of All Saints, where stands a stone with a strange and puzzling inscriptionβ¦. This squared-off stone pillar stands some 6 feet high, and on one face is caved with six lines of curious inscription in capital letters.
AD β Anno Domini ;. From medieval times, syphilis was one of the most prevalent venereal diseases rampant throughout the sexually active population.
Blame culture is nothing new, and the advent and spread of the disease in Europe was said to have arisen from the crew members who picked up the disease on the voyages led by Christopher Columbus, who if such assertions are to be believed certainly discovered more than just the New World. Whatever it was called, historians have concluded from the archives of prisons, hospitals and asylums that an estimated one-fifth of the population might have been infected at any one time, with London hospitals during the 18th century treating barely a fraction of those infected.
And that treatment was mercury. The toxicity and terrible side-effects of mercury, however, caused neuropathy, kidney failure, and severe mouth ulcers and loss of teeth, and the death of a patient often resulting from mercurial poisoning rather than from the disease itself. Of course, the outcome was obvious: the young innocent was invariably infected herself, going on to spread the disease still further.
