Commonplace 69 George & Syphilis PART EIGHT Edith's Heroic Life part 4 THE END.
Edith was doomed from the moment she entered into a mental asylum - few people ever found their way out to the other side, especially those with no support systems in place, and no friends. Without an advocate in the free world, who would represent her? And, when everyone wanted her to remain institutionalised and out of the way, what hope was there? In moments of lucidity, this would have been apparent to her. With the likes of Misses Orme and Collet using their contracts and considerable mental gifts to outwit any opposition Edith might have mounted, all she had recourse to was a raft of poignant, pointless letters to Ellen Gissing.
You have to wonder at the brain power of the two Gissing girls - Madge was written off by George when she was a girl, and her health seems to have been dire - which is probably why religion took such a hold on her. And, as with all George's siblings, the example of Number One Brother was in the negative, not the positive, strain - so we mustn't expect too much of her. But, Ellen, the one more corresponding to George's own underachieving female archetype, hardly seems to have raised her head above the parapet of life - though that would not have been unusual of lower middle class women at the time. But, still... you have to ask what would Jesus have done with Edith's cries for help? The power of influence over her that was Miss Collet's role as executrix seems to have (willingly) overruled her assumed Christian charity where her sister-in-law was concerned. When Edith wrote a heartfelt letter asking for help in being considered for discharge from the asylum she was housed in, Ellen passed on the letter - and the moral decision-making - to Miss Collet (like brother like sister it seems), who was only too pleased to act as some sort of necrophiliac minion. Anthony Petyt, in his Gissing Journal account (see previous Commonplace posts), says he doesn't know if Miss Collet bothered to find out if Edith was eligible or sane enough to be rehabilitated, but that Edith spent the rest of her life in the mental hospital mausoleum she was cast in to.
Judge for yourself; this was written by Edith on August 8th 1910.
Dear Miss Gissing,
I am not writing to ask you to come and see me but to come and make it possible for me to pass out at the end of this year. I have been ten years among the Insane.
I hope the Boys are quite well and yourself also. Hoping to see or hear from you soon.
with love,
From
Edith.
Ellen did not reply - she never replied to any of Edith's letters; she gave that task over to Miss Collet who didn't, as far as we know, bother to put pen to paper directly to her master's widow. You might recall how George tended to give the dirty work over to his minions - seems Ellen was a chip off that block, too. However, given the rational nature of this letter, you would think she might have found it in her heart to write back - knowing what that might mean to Edith's sense of herself.
Let's take up these doctor's notes on Edith, in 1910, about the time this letter was written. One doctor wrote this in May 1910: Is still deluded about her husband being alive but thinks now the "poisoning" was a mistake & that carbolic acid was only used for cleaning purposes & not to poison her. Is quiet & reserved & clean but is occasionally violent. You will recall Edith often thought carbolic was put in her tea - which might have been because of the strong odour of disinfect used (it was a relatively new form of cleaning agent).
In June (has the regime changed from quarterly to monthly reviews?): Excited at times, very reserved.
September: No change in mental condition. Health good.
Now, something must have happened - because the Edith who wrote the letter to Ellen was not the Edith who, in 1909, was routinely reported as excited, deluded, noisy and abusive. This seeming 'cure' and return to a quiet, reasonable state in 1910, is exactly what might be predicted from a diagnosis of paresis, where 'periods of clarity' - as Deborah Hayden calls them in her study of syphilitic paresis: Pox. Genius, Madness and the Mysteries of Syphilis (2004) - are the norm. The letter certainly seems to be a product of this sort of phase.
In November 1910: She is usually quiet & reserved & keeping much to herself but occasionally she is abusive & restless, her conversation is incoherent & often her conduct is irrational. How 'rational' should you be acting after years of institutionalisation?? And when does being 'irrational' mean one is insane?? It is irrational to decide to get so drunk you fall down and show you pants in the street - but hundreds of young Brits do it every Friday night; in fact, they do it to stop themselves being 'rational'. And, this is not a term with any value as who knows what the doctor thinks 'rational' to be.
It seems there are some breaks in the recording of medical notes - Edith was discharged from Fisherton House Asylum and transferred to Dorset County Asylum (near Charminster) on March 9th 1912. No reason (Anthony Petyt writes) is known for the discharge. The Dorset County Asylum had a private wing, a villa set in the grounds, referred to as Herrison House, later amalgamated with the main asylum to form the Herrison Hospital click
There seems to be no reason found for why Edith was moved. Usually, patients remained in the asylums in which they were situated, until funds ran out and they were transferred to 'County Asylum' care. However, Edith was a paying, private patient, and so Fisherton House would be happy to keep her, whatever her diagnosis. So, what might be the reason for her to be transferred to another fee-paying situation? The most obvious is that it would place her further out of reach of her sons. Walter was 19 years old in December 1910, and so would have been responsible for his own affairs. He had been taken on as an assistant to Ernest Grimson, an 'architect and furniture designer', according to the Gissing Journal of July 1996 (Volume XXXII; Number 3). This meant he was based in Cirencester, about 55 miles from Salisbury and Fisherton House Asylum. By his mother being transferred south to Charminster, another 40 miles were added to the trip - and even today, that's a 6 hours and 40 minutes train journey, with three line changes and quite a bit of walking. Even accounting for the pre-Doctor Beeching cuts click to the railway system, and factoring in the 1910 time spent at all the stops between, that is a commensurate amount of time in today's terms.
We can assume once Walter was old enough to know all the details of his mother's detention, he would be inquisitive. Lordy knows what the minions told him, but he might very well have wanted to find out for himself what was going on - having been fed propaganda for so long, and being a headstrong and resilient sort of fellow, starting out in life, ploughing his own furrow. Letters between them would not have survived - asylums tended to keep patients' correspondence on file, and would have censored and redacted anything untoward. There is the possibility the minions told the hospital not to let letters get through.
All this talk of Edith wanting contact with her 'Boys', even to be remembered to them, is the sort of thing Gissing biographers miss. They prefer to see Edith as a subhuman monster - which she clearly was not. Even without the affliction of paresis to affect her judgement and mood, she was in a terrible situation - in her marriage, totally at the mercy of a heartless and self-centred man who callously exploited her femininity then rejected her when it suited him. Just as he had done with Marianne aka Nell. Just as he was planning to do with Gabrielle - in fact, was doing as he spent so little time with his third life partner, giving her the slip whenever he could, holing up out of her reach - for his health haha. How could Edith have survived George, even if she had been meek and mild and the very epitome of Richard Mutimer or Marian Yule's mother (is there something Freudian/Oedipal in George's depictions of working class mothers and his choice of wife???) - how could that role be attained, except by caving in to his every demand and irrational rule?
Edith's mental health, as described in the admission report at Herrison House, had deteriorated, but, again, this fits the pattern of paresis. She is described as conscious and aware of her surroundings, answers questions sensibly - but deluded. Asks in a very childish manner to see a solicitor in order to be discharged, but mostly tries to avoid MD. Taciturn and solitary. Health fair.
Again, she thinks George is alive and nearby; she frets over wanting to be being discharged, but it is all in vain. Anyone who has read Erving Goffman's 'Asylum' click will know it is much easier to get into a mental hospital than it is to get out. And so it goes on, the inevitable slow walk to the exit. Patients similarly incarcerated speak of only being discharged 'in a pine overcoat' - you know well what they mean.
January 1913 - No improvement or change of any kind to report. Well, shame on them for being so useless. What a waste of an interview - if they ever did one.
April 1913 - Edith's physical health begins to decline. There is a bit of pyrexia. Her respiration count is fast at 25 (per minute - resting, it should be 15ish); her pulse is 100 (resting pulse is usually 70ish per minute), but she will be stressed on examination, so nothing untoward. She has pain in her left side. No cough or sputum (so no phthisis, it seems) She reluctantly agrees to being examined by the MD. He reports:
Whole of left side dull to percussion, and he finds bronchophony and pectoriloquy well marked. These are abnormal readings, indicating changes in lung tissue producing hardening and loss of function. Fine crepitations can occasionally be heard - here, meaning abnormal sounds of the lungs as they expand and contract. A little bronchitis and rales (similar to crepitations) and rhonchi (the sound of crackling you can hear in 'wheezy' chests). Diagnosis - probably a dry? fibroid phthisis.
This seems to be a reasonable diagnosis - we know George had TB and could have passed it on to Edith, and fibroid phthisis is a clearly defined disease click. However, there is a possible differentiated diagnosis: pulmonary syphilis - click.
July 1913 - Still very foulmouthed. Was she swearing, using profanity, or speaking out loud about sexual topics?? One woman's foul mouth is another's lyric poetry.
Edith's health stabilised and throughout the rest of the year and on into 1914...
April 1914 - General health is much better as she spends almost the whole day out of doors. Mental condition is as bad as ever. There are no summer notes, and then...
October 2nd - Is quite demented, takes no notice of anybody or anything.
November - She seems quite lost and is unable to realise her present surroundings. In moderate health.
So, we have a typical slide to dementia - which is an umbrella term in 1914, when ich is not typical or fibroid phthisis or TB or functional psychoses. Organic psychoses - where the brain is changed by damage from any infection, disease, trauma, toxic overload, and many other brain-damaging factors - generally slower and more insidious.
April 1915 - Ideas confused. Perception disordered.
May 1915 - This 'two-word' entry is indecipherable (according to Anthony Petyt reporting in the Gissing Journal). Then, there is a mysterious gap of 16 months in recorded notes. Is this just a Gissing Journal editorial condensing for publication thing? No explanation is forthcoming from the GJ but it is worth noting this period of missed months coincides with Walter's time in the British Army and his sad death at the Somme, estimated to be July 1st 1916.
September 1916 - There is a tumour in one of her breasts... She is sullen and solitary.
January 1917 - A hopeless case of delusional insanity...
February 20th 1917 ... She was supposed to be phthisical but no signs of pulmonary tuberculosis can be made out.
February 22nd 1917 - Albumin in urine (indicative of kidney failure) complains of pains in chest but is probably due to her tumour in her breast.
Edith grew weaker and more helpless, and required catheterising. She vomited frequently, her pulse was tachycardic, she had a slight fever (temp 99.6). On February 27th, she died at 10.50pm. There is no note of her last moments, who was present, or how she was mourned. Were her Boys at the funeral? I doubt it - the minions would not have allowed that!
There was a post mortem. This is taken from the Gissing Journal account, so, in the interests of editorship it might not be complete:
Tumour in left breast - no diagnosis for why there is a tumour. As it wasn't tuberculous, it might have been cancerous. However, there is no mention of the cancer spread to other organs, which would have been perfectly likely in a case of mammary cancerous tumour. Edith, George reported in his Diary, had trouble breastfeeding - was this because she was experiencing syphilitic lesions to her breasts, being in the secondary stages of the disease?
Bowel congested in parts. No sign of enteric fever or dysentery. Important information for the hospital as contagion would have spread quickly, and would have required attention.
Spleen enlarged, weight 8 ounces, surface or organ studded over with white spots (tubercles). Tubercles are not to be taken as TB - a tubercle is a descriptive term for a type of tissue growth click.
Lungs - normal - spread of cancer to the lungs might have been expected in a case of breast cancer, but the symptoms and signs of this are not reported - either via post mortem exam or in patient's clinical signs and so were not a factor. In the above mentioned report click we have the case of a patient with Pulmonary syphilis mimicking pulmonary hematogenous metastases on chest.
Heart - normal.
Edith's cause of death was given as Organic Brain Disease - and, yet, there is no mention of post mortem exam of her brain! Was this skipped and a general cause of death given to save time and effort? After all, who would care? Or, was it patently obvious Edith had paresis, and so there was no need to bother with a full PM? In a case of insanity and/or dementia, and in the laboratory of a mental asylum, wouldn't it be standard practice to examine patients' brains?? Or, was it that a diagnosis of GPI/paresis was not recorded because the doctors were unfamiliar with it? It was still a mysterious concomitant to tertiary syphilis, and the full extent of its prognosis was unclear, so it may be the doctors were unfamiliar with the appearance of it in brain tissue.
Organic Brain Disease - here is the definition from here click:
Organic brain syndrome (OBS), also known as organic brain disease (OBD) Organic mental disorders organic brain disorder, is an older and nearly obsolete general term from psychiatry, referring to many physical disorders that cause impaired mental function.[1]It does not include psychiatric disorders. Originally, the term was created to distinguish physical (termed "organic") causes of mental impairment from psychiatric (termed "functional") disorders. Treatment of OBS varies with the causative disorder or disease. It is important to note that it is not a primary diagnosis and a cause needs to be sought out and treated.
So, the final cause of death was equivocal, little more than a bog-standard entry, and very probably derived without an examination of brain tissue. However, there is a very strong case to suggest this was paresis.
1) George was known to have contracted some form of venereal infection, very likely to have been syphilis.
2) Physical symptoms such as breast problems, post-natal infections in her teeth, in the secondary stage of the illness.
3) 4 year gap between children being conceived. Standard time recommended by Ricord.
4) Behavioural changes began as early as 2-3 years after infection. George records this as problems with the servants and not doing the right 'middle class' thing becoming of a lady of the house, and arguing.
5) Bursts of violent behaviour and aggression which certainly were not a feature of early married life - typical of paresis.
6) Monomaniacal ideas about pursuing George when he deserted her.
7) Rapid onset of mental impairment.
8) Delusions of persecution which may have been over-reactions to real experiences (carbolic acid, men staring at her in public etc)
9) Hallucinations of touch - felt 'electricity' in her feet, as did Daudet; Van Gogh and Nietzsche (known syphilitics) also described experiences of being afflicted with sensations of being lit up by electricity, or pained by it.
10) Described as 'excitable' - and this was how Van Gogh was described, and Flaubert, Nietzsche, and de Maupassant. Remember George reported he felt anxious/hyper alert when the door knocker sounded, back in the living with Marianne days - was this at the start of his paresis?
11) Paresis attacks women more often than men - who suffer more from tabes dorsalis than do women.
12)Periods of remission, depression - and protean nature of this mental illness.
13) Possible pulmonary syphilis misdiagnosed as breast tumour. All those lung sounds previously listed should have been seen in exam at PM of the lung tissue - their absence indicates pulmonary syphilis.
14) Cause of death OBD - consistent with brain syphilis diagnosis as cause of dementia. Perhaps this is why no findings for PM exam of the brain was listed - it was dissected and syphilis was found, but for whatever reason, it was decided not to record it.
15) Edith was only 50 when she died - very young for OBD, and approx 30 years after contracting the disease - the typical span for syphilis.
Edith was buried at St Mary's Churchyard in Charminster, on March 6th 1917. The location of the grave is unknown as renovations and changes to the landscape have meant graves were lifted and bodies removed elsewhere or paved over. She is mentioned in the burial register 1916-17, page 23, entry 180. I doubt if Miss Collet or Bad Eliza Orme attended the funeral.
by Heinrich Heine
There lies the heat of summer
On your cheek’s lovely art:
There lies the cold of winter
Within your little heart.
That will change, beloved,
The end not as the start!
Winter on your cheek then,
Summer in your heart.
You have to wonder at the brain power of the two Gissing girls - Madge was written off by George when she was a girl, and her health seems to have been dire - which is probably why religion took such a hold on her. And, as with all George's siblings, the example of Number One Brother was in the negative, not the positive, strain - so we mustn't expect too much of her. But, Ellen, the one more corresponding to George's own underachieving female archetype, hardly seems to have raised her head above the parapet of life - though that would not have been unusual of lower middle class women at the time. But, still... you have to ask what would Jesus have done with Edith's cries for help? The power of influence over her that was Miss Collet's role as executrix seems to have (willingly) overruled her assumed Christian charity where her sister-in-law was concerned. When Edith wrote a heartfelt letter asking for help in being considered for discharge from the asylum she was housed in, Ellen passed on the letter - and the moral decision-making - to Miss Collet (like brother like sister it seems), who was only too pleased to act as some sort of necrophiliac minion. Anthony Petyt, in his Gissing Journal account (see previous Commonplace posts), says he doesn't know if Miss Collet bothered to find out if Edith was eligible or sane enough to be rehabilitated, but that Edith spent the rest of her life in the mental hospital mausoleum she was cast in to.
Judge for yourself; this was written by Edith on August 8th 1910.
Dear Miss Gissing,
I am not writing to ask you to come and see me but to come and make it possible for me to pass out at the end of this year. I have been ten years among the Insane.
I hope the Boys are quite well and yourself also. Hoping to see or hear from you soon.
with love,
From
Edith.
 |
| At The Races by Edgar Degas 1877-1880 |
Let's take up these doctor's notes on Edith, in 1910, about the time this letter was written. One doctor wrote this in May 1910: Is still deluded about her husband being alive but thinks now the "poisoning" was a mistake & that carbolic acid was only used for cleaning purposes & not to poison her. Is quiet & reserved & clean but is occasionally violent. You will recall Edith often thought carbolic was put in her tea - which might have been because of the strong odour of disinfect used (it was a relatively new form of cleaning agent).
In June (has the regime changed from quarterly to monthly reviews?): Excited at times, very reserved.
September: No change in mental condition. Health good.
Now, something must have happened - because the Edith who wrote the letter to Ellen was not the Edith who, in 1909, was routinely reported as excited, deluded, noisy and abusive. This seeming 'cure' and return to a quiet, reasonable state in 1910, is exactly what might be predicted from a diagnosis of paresis, where 'periods of clarity' - as Deborah Hayden calls them in her study of syphilitic paresis: Pox. Genius, Madness and the Mysteries of Syphilis (2004) - are the norm. The letter certainly seems to be a product of this sort of phase.
In November 1910: She is usually quiet & reserved & keeping much to herself but occasionally she is abusive & restless, her conversation is incoherent & often her conduct is irrational. How 'rational' should you be acting after years of institutionalisation?? And when does being 'irrational' mean one is insane?? It is irrational to decide to get so drunk you fall down and show you pants in the street - but hundreds of young Brits do it every Friday night; in fact, they do it to stop themselves being 'rational'. And, this is not a term with any value as who knows what the doctor thinks 'rational' to be.
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| The Bellelli Family by Edgar Degas 1856-1867 |
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| Herrison House Private Patients' Wing. |
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| Emma Dobigny by Edgar Degas 1869 |
We can assume once Walter was old enough to know all the details of his mother's detention, he would be inquisitive. Lordy knows what the minions told him, but he might very well have wanted to find out for himself what was going on - having been fed propaganda for so long, and being a headstrong and resilient sort of fellow, starting out in life, ploughing his own furrow. Letters between them would not have survived - asylums tended to keep patients' correspondence on file, and would have censored and redacted anything untoward. There is the possibility the minions told the hospital not to let letters get through.
All this talk of Edith wanting contact with her 'Boys', even to be remembered to them, is the sort of thing Gissing biographers miss. They prefer to see Edith as a subhuman monster - which she clearly was not. Even without the affliction of paresis to affect her judgement and mood, she was in a terrible situation - in her marriage, totally at the mercy of a heartless and self-centred man who callously exploited her femininity then rejected her when it suited him. Just as he had done with Marianne aka Nell. Just as he was planning to do with Gabrielle - in fact, was doing as he spent so little time with his third life partner, giving her the slip whenever he could, holing up out of her reach - for his health haha. How could Edith have survived George, even if she had been meek and mild and the very epitome of Richard Mutimer or Marian Yule's mother (is there something Freudian/Oedipal in George's depictions of working class mothers and his choice of wife???) - how could that role be attained, except by caving in to his every demand and irrational rule?
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| Two Ballet Dancers by Edgar Degas 1856 |
Again, she thinks George is alive and nearby; she frets over wanting to be being discharged, but it is all in vain. Anyone who has read Erving Goffman's 'Asylum' click will know it is much easier to get into a mental hospital than it is to get out. And so it goes on, the inevitable slow walk to the exit. Patients similarly incarcerated speak of only being discharged 'in a pine overcoat' - you know well what they mean.
January 1913 - No improvement or change of any kind to report. Well, shame on them for being so useless. What a waste of an interview - if they ever did one.
April 1913 - Edith's physical health begins to decline. There is a bit of pyrexia. Her respiration count is fast at 25 (per minute - resting, it should be 15ish); her pulse is 100 (resting pulse is usually 70ish per minute), but she will be stressed on examination, so nothing untoward. She has pain in her left side. No cough or sputum (so no phthisis, it seems) She reluctantly agrees to being examined by the MD. He reports:
Whole of left side dull to percussion, and he finds bronchophony and pectoriloquy well marked. These are abnormal readings, indicating changes in lung tissue producing hardening and loss of function. Fine crepitations can occasionally be heard - here, meaning abnormal sounds of the lungs as they expand and contract. A little bronchitis and rales (similar to crepitations) and rhonchi (the sound of crackling you can hear in 'wheezy' chests). Diagnosis - probably a dry? fibroid phthisis.
This seems to be a reasonable diagnosis - we know George had TB and could have passed it on to Edith, and fibroid phthisis is a clearly defined disease click. However, there is a possible differentiated diagnosis: pulmonary syphilis - click.
July 1913 - Still very foulmouthed. Was she swearing, using profanity, or speaking out loud about sexual topics?? One woman's foul mouth is another's lyric poetry.
Edith's health stabilised and throughout the rest of the year and on into 1914...
April 1914 - General health is much better as she spends almost the whole day out of doors. Mental condition is as bad as ever. There are no summer notes, and then...
October 2nd - Is quite demented, takes no notice of anybody or anything.
November - She seems quite lost and is unable to realise her present surroundings. In moderate health.
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| Dancers in Pink by Edgar Degas 1880-85 |
April 1915 - Ideas confused. Perception disordered.
May 1915 - This 'two-word' entry is indecipherable (according to Anthony Petyt reporting in the Gissing Journal). Then, there is a mysterious gap of 16 months in recorded notes. Is this just a Gissing Journal editorial condensing for publication thing? No explanation is forthcoming from the GJ but it is worth noting this period of missed months coincides with Walter's time in the British Army and his sad death at the Somme, estimated to be July 1st 1916.
September 1916 - There is a tumour in one of her breasts... She is sullen and solitary.
January 1917 - A hopeless case of delusional insanity...
February 20th 1917 ... She was supposed to be phthisical but no signs of pulmonary tuberculosis can be made out.
February 22nd 1917 - Albumin in urine (indicative of kidney failure) complains of pains in chest but is probably due to her tumour in her breast.
Edith grew weaker and more helpless, and required catheterising. She vomited frequently, her pulse was tachycardic, she had a slight fever (temp 99.6). On February 27th, she died at 10.50pm. There is no note of her last moments, who was present, or how she was mourned. Were her Boys at the funeral? I doubt it - the minions would not have allowed that!
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| Young Spartans Exercising by Edgar Degas 1860-1862 |
Tumour in left breast - no diagnosis for why there is a tumour. As it wasn't tuberculous, it might have been cancerous. However, there is no mention of the cancer spread to other organs, which would have been perfectly likely in a case of mammary cancerous tumour. Edith, George reported in his Diary, had trouble breastfeeding - was this because she was experiencing syphilitic lesions to her breasts, being in the secondary stages of the disease?
Bowel congested in parts. No sign of enteric fever or dysentery. Important information for the hospital as contagion would have spread quickly, and would have required attention.
Spleen enlarged, weight 8 ounces, surface or organ studded over with white spots (tubercles). Tubercles are not to be taken as TB - a tubercle is a descriptive term for a type of tissue growth click.
Lungs - normal - spread of cancer to the lungs might have been expected in a case of breast cancer, but the symptoms and signs of this are not reported - either via post mortem exam or in patient's clinical signs and so were not a factor. In the above mentioned report click we have the case of a patient with Pulmonary syphilis mimicking pulmonary hematogenous metastases on chest.
Heart - normal.
Edith's cause of death was given as Organic Brain Disease - and, yet, there is no mention of post mortem exam of her brain! Was this skipped and a general cause of death given to save time and effort? After all, who would care? Or, was it patently obvious Edith had paresis, and so there was no need to bother with a full PM? In a case of insanity and/or dementia, and in the laboratory of a mental asylum, wouldn't it be standard practice to examine patients' brains?? Or, was it that a diagnosis of GPI/paresis was not recorded because the doctors were unfamiliar with it? It was still a mysterious concomitant to tertiary syphilis, and the full extent of its prognosis was unclear, so it may be the doctors were unfamiliar with the appearance of it in brain tissue.
Organic Brain Disease - here is the definition from here click:
Organic brain syndrome (OBS), also known as organic brain disease (OBD) Organic mental disorders organic brain disorder, is an older and nearly obsolete general term from psychiatry, referring to many physical disorders that cause impaired mental function.[1]It does not include psychiatric disorders. Originally, the term was created to distinguish physical (termed "organic") causes of mental impairment from psychiatric (termed "functional") disorders. Treatment of OBS varies with the causative disorder or disease. It is important to note that it is not a primary diagnosis and a cause needs to be sought out and treated.
So, the final cause of death was equivocal, little more than a bog-standard entry, and very probably derived without an examination of brain tissue. However, there is a very strong case to suggest this was paresis.
1) George was known to have contracted some form of venereal infection, very likely to have been syphilis.
2) Physical symptoms such as breast problems, post-natal infections in her teeth, in the secondary stage of the illness.
3) 4 year gap between children being conceived. Standard time recommended by Ricord.
4) Behavioural changes began as early as 2-3 years after infection. George records this as problems with the servants and not doing the right 'middle class' thing becoming of a lady of the house, and arguing.
5) Bursts of violent behaviour and aggression which certainly were not a feature of early married life - typical of paresis.
6) Monomaniacal ideas about pursuing George when he deserted her.
7) Rapid onset of mental impairment.
8) Delusions of persecution which may have been over-reactions to real experiences (carbolic acid, men staring at her in public etc)
9) Hallucinations of touch - felt 'electricity' in her feet, as did Daudet; Van Gogh and Nietzsche (known syphilitics) also described experiences of being afflicted with sensations of being lit up by electricity, or pained by it.
10) Described as 'excitable' - and this was how Van Gogh was described, and Flaubert, Nietzsche, and de Maupassant. Remember George reported he felt anxious/hyper alert when the door knocker sounded, back in the living with Marianne days - was this at the start of his paresis?
11) Paresis attacks women more often than men - who suffer more from tabes dorsalis than do women.
12)Periods of remission, depression - and protean nature of this mental illness.
13) Possible pulmonary syphilis misdiagnosed as breast tumour. All those lung sounds previously listed should have been seen in exam at PM of the lung tissue - their absence indicates pulmonary syphilis.
14) Cause of death OBD - consistent with brain syphilis diagnosis as cause of dementia. Perhaps this is why no findings for PM exam of the brain was listed - it was dissected and syphilis was found, but for whatever reason, it was decided not to record it.
15) Edith was only 50 when she died - very young for OBD, and approx 30 years after contracting the disease - the typical span for syphilis.
Edith was buried at St Mary's Churchyard in Charminster, on March 6th 1917. The location of the grave is unknown as renovations and changes to the landscape have meant graves were lifted and bodies removed elsewhere or paved over. She is mentioned in the burial register 1916-17, page 23, entry 180. I doubt if Miss Collet or Bad Eliza Orme attended the funeral.
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