I agree Devon, the theory of blindness from making lace has never made sense to me. However, I disagree that syphilis was the usual culprit since the stages of primary, secondary, and tertiary syphilis were well known and recognized. Had these women been blinded by syphilis, I donât think the legend of being blinded by the lace work itself would ever have been started. My pet theory is Clamydia trachomatis. This is still the leading infectious cause of blindness today in 3rd world countries. Itâs epidemiology makes it a likely candidate in my opinion. Even today, it affects significantly more women than men. Blindness, when it progresses to that point, usually occurs during adulthood, striking women today in their late 20s to early 40s. By this age, most lacemakers would have been making lace for a good many years, thus, it may have appeared that it was the lacemaking that caused the blindness. Then as now, it was endemic in poor areas with poor sanitation. Itâs natural reservoir is young children, and the adults affected are virtually always the caretakers of young childrenâ hence, the overwhelming majority of those affected are women. It is far more prevalent in households with multiple children, lack of water, poor personnel hygiene, open fires for cooking, and group sleeping. The part I found the most compelling as far as the lacemaking legend, is that the early infections in children present as a typical conjunctivitisâ highly contagious, lots of eye discharge, and a pretty noticeable infection. In adults, however, the scarring that leads to cornea opacities and blindness occurs after repeated infections earlier in life. By adulthood, they no longer get the typical conjunctivitis with the active discharge due to changes in their immune response. Their infections at that point are latent and often no longer result in what we would consider to be a ânormalâ looking conjunctivitis. So to observers with no knowledge of the disease progression or even germ theory, it would appear that adult women who took care of children, lived in poor conditions and had poor sanitation and hygiene, and made fine lace, tended to go blind after a couple of decades of fine lacework. By recognizing that lace took sharp eyesight, they made the assumption that the lacemaking caused the blindness. When in actuality, lace and good eyesight were just confounding factors and the true culprit wasnât recognized because the really noticeable infections had taken place years before. Blindness due to C. trachomatis faded away in Europe long before antibiotics were available to treat it because sanitation became better, access to clean water was more readily available, and most importantly, knowledge of using cleanliness to avoid disease became more widespread.
I love it when my worlds collide! Eliseâ microbiologist in Maine Sent from my iPad > On Sep 1, 2018, at 7:58 AM, Devon Thein <devonth...@gmail.com> wrote: > One theory about blindness among lacemakers is > that, living in port towns as most lacemaking towns tend to be, > lacemakers may have been contracting syphilis. > To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: > unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to > arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: > http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/ - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
