Re: (ReacTor) Five Futures Where the US Ended Not With a Bang But a Whimper

On Mon, 21 Jul 2025 16:19:59 -0400, William Hyde
<wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
 

Scott Dorsey wrote:

William Hyde  <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:

Irrelevant.  Randolph was sick, possibly but not certainly from
syphilis.  Nothing heritable, at any rate.

>
But syphilis -is- heritable, and frequently was inherited in the 19th
century and the early part of the 20th before Dr. Ehrlich's cure.
--scott
>

As I understand it, the victim is contagious for a few years, but then,
though still infected, he no longer spreads the disease. So if Randolph
caught it - and it is far from clear that he did - it must have been
well before his marriage.

 Many US states used to require blood tests before issuing a marriage
licence and in most jurisdictions the stated reason was to ensure
sexually transmitted diseases weren't present at a marriage.
 This has been waived in most jurisdictions in the last 50 years. (At
least I didn't have to do one though for my own benefit did a medical
checkup late in our engagement)