perhaps such impotence is an inevitable
result of poetry’s inability to ½nd con-
vincing collective voices that might
make revolutionary sentiments less
wistful and less dogged by irony.
118
La caída de Dédalo 2004
Lynn Margulis
on syphilis &
Nietzsche’s madness:
spirochetes awake!
In the foothills of the Italian Alps, en un
snow-draped piazza in Turin on January
3, 1889, a driver was flogging his horse
when a man flung his arms around the
poor beast’s neck, his tears soaking its
mane. The horse’s savior was the Ger-
man philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm
Nietzsche (1844–1900). His landlord
later found him collapsed in the square
and brought him back to his room,
where Nietzsche spent the night writing
a flurry of bizarre postcards. As soon as
his friend and colleague Jacob Burck-
Lynn Margulis is Distinguished University Profes-
sor in the department of geosciences at the Univer-
sity of Massachusetts, Amherst. A Fellow of the
American Academy since 1998, she is the author
of “Symbiosis in Cell Evolution: Microbial Com-
munities in the Archean and Proterozoic Eons”
(2y ed., 1993) and “Symbiotic Planet: A New
Look at Evolution” (1998). She coauthored “Ear-
ly Life: Evolution on the Precambrian Earth”
(2002) with Michael F. Dolan and “Acquiring
Genomes: A Theory of the Origin of the Species”
(2002) with Dorion Sagan.
© 2004 por la Academia Americana de las Artes
& Ciencias
yo
D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d
F
r
oh
metro
h
t
t
pag
:
/
/
d
i
r
mi
C
t
.
metro
i
t
.
/
mi
d
tu
d
a
mi
d
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d
/
yo
F
/
/
/
/
/
1
3
3
4
1
1
8
1
8
2
8
8
9
6
0
0
1
1
5
2
6
0
4
2
3
6
5
6
2
7
pag
d
.
F
b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t
t
oh
norte
0
8
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3
Syphilis &
Nietzsche’s
madness:
spirochetes
awake!
hardt received a crazed letter, he con-
vinced his close friend Peter Gast to go
and accompany Nietzsche on his return
to Basel. Much of the rest of the century,
the last eleven years of his life, Nietzsche
spent in incoherent madness, crouching
in corners and drinking his urine. El
most productive year of his career had
been immediately prior to the psychotic
break. After it, he wrote no more philos-
ophy. Deborah Hayden, in her recent
book Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mys-
teries of Syphilis (2003), summed up the
famous incident:
The story of Nietzsche’s sudden plummet
from the most advanced thought of his
time to raving dementia is often told as
if there were a razor’s edge demarcation
between sanity and tertiary syphilis, como si
en 3 January armies of spirochetes woke
suddenly from decades of slumber and at-
tacked the brain, instead of the biological
reality that paresis is a gradual process
presaged over many years.
Hayden’s case to prove that Nietzsche
indeed suffered all his adult life from
syphilis is as strong as any posthumous
medical history can be. He was diag-
nosed at a time when clinical familiarity
with the disease abounded. Detailed evi-
dence shows that he passed through
each of the three stages: the chancre of
primary syphilis immediately after in-
fection; the terrible pox, fever, and pain
of secondary syphilis that emerges
months or years later; and the dreaded
tercero: paresis. ‘Paresis,’ like the word
‘syphilis’ itself, refers to a syndrome.
An acronym, its mnemonic is: persona-
ality disturbances; affect abnormalities;
reflex hyperactivity; eye abnormalities;
sensorium changes; intellectual impair-
mento; and slurred speech. Paresis often
begins with a dramatic delusional epi-
sode, but in the following months and
years dementia alternates with periods
of such clarity that there seems to have
been a cure.
Infection by the spirochete of syphilis
–declared eradicated in the mid-twenti-
eth century–still prevails, I believe. El
ef½cacy of early treatment with penicil-
lin, improved hygiene, condom use, y
attitudes that lead the afflicted to seek
help for venereal disease conspire to bol-
ster the common myth that syphilis has
disappeared. We are deceived; muchos
people suffer from syphilis called by
other names.
Syphilis symptoms are caused by vene-
real infection with a spirochete bacteri-
um called Treponema pallidum. The tre-
poneme family of spirochetes consists
of tiny corkscrew-shaped bacteria, todo
which swim and grow in animal tissue.
The bacterial flagella are encased within
an outer membrane. Spirochetes, como
other ‘gram negative’ bacteria, all have
two cell membranes with a space be-
tween them. In this periplasmic space
between the inner and outer membranes
the flagella rotate. Smaller spirochetes
such as the syphilis treponeme have only
one or two such flagella, whereas some
giant spirochetes have more than three
hundred. The ef½cient screw-wise mo-
tion into genital and other tissue re-
quires this flagellar arrangement.
Treponema pallidum is one freak among
a huge diversity. The vast majority of
spirochetes live peacefully in mud,
swamps, and waterlogged soils all over
el mundo. Benign, ‘free-living’ spiro-
chete relatives of Treponema pallidum are
everywhere. They thrive where food is
plentiful: lakeshores rich in decaying
vegetation, marine animal carcasses,
hot sulfurous springs, intestines of
wood-eating termites and cockroaches,
and the human mouth. Most kinds are
poisoned by oxygen, from which they
swim away to avoid. Very few cause ill-
ness, yet ticks infected with the Borrelia
La caída de Dédalo 2004
119
yo
D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d
F
r
oh
metro
h
t
t
pag
:
/
/
d
i
r
mi
C
t
.
metro
i
t
.
/
mi
d
tu
d
a
mi
d
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d
/
yo
F
/
/
/
/
/
1
3
3
4
1
1
8
1
8
2
8
8
9
6
0
0
1
1
5
2
6
0
4
2
3
6
5
6
2
7
pag
d
.
F
b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t
t
oh
norte
0
8
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3
Note by
Lynn
Margulis
burgdorferi spirochete of Lyme disease
can induce serious arthritis and other
enduring symptoms. Another spirochete
nearly indistinguishable from the Lyme
disease Borrelia is a healthy symbiont in
the intestines of termites. A treponeme
similar to that of syphilis is associated
with the tropical eye disease yaws.
Leptospirosis, a systemic and some-
times fatal infection found usually in
½shermen, is due to spirochetes that are
carried in the kidney tubules of rats that
urinate into nearby water. The ½sher-
men acquire Leptospira spirochetes from
½shhook cuts and other skin lesions.
Y, por supuesto, there is syphilis.
Nietzsche’s letters from 1867 until his
breakdown provide a vivid account of
the suffering of secondary syphilis. Él
complains of the pain, skin sores, weak-
ness, and loss of vision that typify the
repertoire of the disease. In his last year,
his letters give evidence of euphoria. Su
published works show the grandeur and
inspiration that tertiary syphilis some-
times brings to brilliant and disciplined
creative minds by removing inhibition
as brain tissue is destroyed. When Niet-
zsche wrote in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
(1884), “Die Erde, sagte Er, hat eine
Haut; und diese Haut hat Krankheiten.
Eine diese Krankheit heist zum Beispiel:
‘Mensch’” (translated as “The Earth, él
dice, has a skin, and this skin has a sick-
ness. One of these sicknesses is called
‘man,’” or as “The Earth is a beautiful
place but it has a pox called man”), qué
terrible insight Nietzsche must have had
into the devastating horror of pox!
Multiple sources indicate that he
was treated for syphilis in 1867 at age
twenty-three. Seeking medical treat-
ment for eye inflammation, a frequent
syphilitic symptom, he consulted Dr.
Otto Eiser, who reported not only Niet-
zsche’s penile lesions, but that he had
engaged in sexual relations several times
on doctor’s orders! Years later, en 1889,
when Nietzsche broke down and was
taken to the clinic of a paresis expert, él
was admitted with the diagnosis “1866.
Syphilit. Infect.”
En 1888 Nietzsche’s productivity was,
by any standard, extraordinary. He com-
pleted his philosophical project: Twilight
of the Idols, The Antichrist, Ecce Homo, y
The Case of Wagner. The style of these
works is apocalyptic, prophetic, incendi-
ary, and megalomaniacal, leading many
scholars to claim the excesses of these
works were due to incipient paresis.
Ahora, after more than half a millennium
of the study of syphilis and more than a
century after Nietzsche’s breakdown,
our research suggests that the philoso-
pher really did plummet abruptly into
madness; armies of spirochetes did
awaken suddenly from decades of slum-
ber, and literally began to eat his brain.
Many claim syphilis was known in
Europe prior to the return of Columbus;
but as Hayden describes and I agree, es
more likely the insidious venereal infec-
tion was a new gift of the Americas to
the people of Europe. Columbus and his
crew returned to Spain with a novel set
of symptoms that soon spread to Naples
and France. From that year, 1493, el dis-
ease was described in detail, ½rst by the
physician who treated Columbus and his
hombres, Dr. Ruiz Diaz de Isla. Diaz report-
ed, “And since the Admiral Don Cristo-
bal Colon had relations and congress
with the inhabitants . . . and since it is
contagious, it spread.” Eventually it af-
fected the waterfront prostitutes of Bar-
celona. Diaz, in work published in 1539,
wrote that infected sailors were accepted
into the army that Charles of France
brought to besiege Naples in 1495 y
into the forces that Ferdinand of Spain
employed to defend Naples. Ferdinand’s
army alone is estimated to have had ½ve
hundred prostitutes among its camp fol-
120
La caída de Dédalo 2004
yo
D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d
F
r
oh
metro
h
t
t
pag
:
/
/
d
i
r
mi
C
t
.
metro
i
t
.
/
mi
d
tu
d
a
mi
d
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d
/
yo
F
/
/
/
/
/
1
3
3
4
1
1
8
1
8
2
8
8
9
6
0
0
1
1
5
2
6
0
4
2
3
6
5
6
2
7
pag
d
.
F
b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t
t
oh
norte
0
8
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3
Syphilis &
Nietzsche’s
madness:
spirochetes
awake!
lowers. Soon after the victorious entry of
Charles’s army, the Great Pox of Naples
erupted. His multinational mercenaries
brought infection back to every Euro-
pean country. Charles himself returned
to France infected. By the next year, el
disease spread across the continent, puz-
zling physicians with its novelty.
Within the early decades of the conta-
gion, in cities across Europe physicians
reported that between 5 y 20 por ciento
of the population suffered. Variously
named at ½rst, it came to be called mor-
bus gallicus, the French malady. Charles’s
army was blamed for its introduction to
Naples–perhaps rightly. Physicians who
published work on it in the lingua franca
of Latin soon after the great outbreak of
1495 drew international attention. Giro-
lamo Fracastoro, en 1530, wrote a verse
treatise on the disease entitled Syphilus
sive Morbus Gallicus, in which the epony-
mous protagonist, a shepherd, is the ½rst
to bear the disease, as a punishment for
impiety. The name stuck.
Syphilis has been surprisingly well
documented since its outbreak in the
closing years of the ½fteenth century,
as microbiologist and sociologist of sci-
ence Ludwik Fleck (1896–1961) wrote in
his masterpiece Genesis and Development
of a Scienti½c Fact. From the sixteenth
through the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury, the prevalence and peculiarities of
syphilis inspired a wide range of litera-
tura, from scienti½c arcana to torrid nov-
los. Mientras tanto, the cause of the disease
was avidly sought. Then in 1905 Erich
Hoffmann sent a genital chancre speci-
men to German microscopist Fritz
Schaudinn, who con½rmed the etiology.
He aptly called the lively, translucent,
thin, corkscrew-shaped bacterium he
observed “thin, pale thread”: Trepo-
nema pallidum. En 1913 Udo J. Wile found
Treponema pallidum spirochetes in the
brains of patients that manifested terti-
ary syphilis symptoms. (The best recent
photo I’ve seen of spirochetes in the
frontal cortex of a paresis patient, ½gure
8-14 in W. mi. Farrar’s Atlas of Infections of
the Nervous System, is at too low a mag-
ni½cation to see round-body details.
See the inside back cover and page 125
below.)
Syphilis has gained attention again
because of its disputed relationship to
aids. Hoy, although physicians rarely
record cases of tertiary syphilis, the ear-
lier two stages of the disease seem on the
rise. aids patients who have a past re-
cord of syphilis that was apparently
cured by antibiotics succumb again to
the disease. “Syphilis in patients infected
with hiv is often more malignant with
a greater disposition for neurological
relapses following treatment,” says Dr.
Russell Johnson of the University of
Minnesota Medical School, a world ex-
pert on the Lyme disease spirochete. Dr.
Peter Duesberg, discoverer of the retro-
virus, rejects exclusive focus on hiv as
the cause of aids in his excellent book
Inventing the aids Virus. He questions
the common assumption that, as a con-
tagious virus, hiv is even the main cause
of the lesions, tumors, rashes, arthritis,
weakness, pneumonia, and other severi-
ties that accompany immunosuppres-
sión. Such symptoms, including the
presence in tissue of both the hiv anti-
body and of the virus itself, may, as in
other opportunistic infections, ser el
consequence, not the cause, of aids. I
suspect that many of the symptoms in
the immunosuppressed sufferers corre-
late both with the tenacity of the syphilis
treponeme and the sexual and other be-
haviors of the patient.
Joan McKenna, a physiologist with a
thermodynamic orientation, writes:
Because spirochetes can be harbored
in any tissue for decades and can move
from latency to reproductive stages,
La caída de Dédalo 2004
121
yo
D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d
F
r
oh
metro
h
t
t
pag
:
/
/
d
i
r
mi
C
t
.
metro
i
t
.
/
mi
d
tu
d
a
mi
d
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d
/
yo
F
/
/
/
/
/
1
3
3
4
1
1
8
1
8
2
8
8
9
6
0
0
1
1
5
2
6
0
4
2
3
6
5
6
2
7
pag
d
.
F
b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t
t
oh
norte
0
8
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3
Note by
Lynn
Margulis
their survival in any host and despite
any known therapy is nearly certain . . . .
[Nosotros también] know that unknown factors
will activate the microorganism [Trepo-
nema pallidum] from latency into an ag-
gressive infection . . . .
She goes on to remark about the relation
between syphilis and aids: “No symp-
toms show up in aids that have not his-
torically shown up with syphilis and the
history of these populations [dónde
aids is rampant] includes a high inci-
dence of syphilis.”
Clinical confusions (misdiagnoses,
anomalous symptoms, conflated multi-
ple infections) have abounded since the
early centuries of syphilology. Yet many
studies con½rm the variety and severity
of symptoms attributable to the Trepo-
nema pallidum spirochete. The malady
remains idiosyncratic in its course, con
variability in the timing of the stages,
and in the absence of any reliable test or
single diagnostic. Still, the evidence sug-
gests that the virulence and severity of
the disease have diminished dramatical-
ly since the initial violent pox outbreak.
This behavior is expected of pathogens
in ½rst exposure to naive populations.
Syphilis in Europe showed the same pat-
tern as measles and smallpox did when
Europeans ½rst introduced them to the
Americas. As early as the ½rst few de-
cades that followed the Pox of Naples,
subsequent generations of Europeans
were more resistant. Pathogenic mi-
crobes maximize not by rapid lethality,
but by transforming into a chronic dis-
ease that lasts a lifetime and subtly af-
fects behavior in the stricken animal.
Since the late nineteenth century, el
Wassermann blood test has often been
touted as the best diagnostic test for
syphilis. The fear of syphilis transmis-
sion was so common that the Wasser-
mann test was, and often still is, legally
mandated in many places, required
prior to marriage. Sin embargo, as shown
by Fleck and others, the Wassermann
reagent does not measure the presence
of Treponema pallidum. It indicates, y
not even 100 por ciento del tiempo, the ex-
posure of a patient to unspeci½ed infec-
tious bacteria: a positive Wassermann
test shows only that a person makes
antibodies against certain blood-borne
bacteria that may include the syphilis
treponeme. Además, this test in
known syphilitics in advanced stages of
the syndrome often converts to negative.
To preclude mother-to-infant trans-
mission of syphilis during parturition,
drops of silver nitrate, thought to sup-
press the syphilitic spirochete, eran
placed in the eyes of most newborns.
This practice occurs in some regions
even now, and even when blood tests
for syphilis in the mother are negative.
These irrational practices measure resid-
ual fear of the contagion of syphilis.
In the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury, arsphenamine, an arsenic-based
remedy, was said to improve the health
of syphilitic patients. Often it made peo-
ple sicker. Después 1943 came the ‘miracle
drug’: the claim was that a single or a
few massive doses of penicillin cured
the body permanently of the dreaded
treponeme. After hefty antibiotic treat-
ment in newly detected cases, the insidi-
ous corkscrews disappeared. Whereas
the apparent remains of ‘dead’ spiro-
chetes–tiny, shiny round bodies–might
sometimes be found in tissue, the mov-
ing treponeme was declared gone. j. Pil-
lot, the French researcher after whom
the beautiful large spirochete Pillotina
was named, ‘proved’ that the round-
body remnants of the lively corkscrew
are dead. The confusion comes from the
fact that–penicillin or not–during the
long latent phases of the disease after the
primary chancre, moving corkscrew tre-
ponemes are not seen anyway. Many
122
La caída de Dédalo 2004
yo
D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d
F
r
oh
metro
h
t
t
pag
:
/
/
d
i
r
mi
C
t
.
metro
i
t
.
/
mi
d
tu
d
a
mi
d
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d
/
yo
F
/
/
/
/
/
1
3
3
4
1
1
8
1
8
2
8
8
9
6
0
0
1
1
5
2
6
0
4
2
3
6
5
6
2
7
pag
d
.
F
b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t
t
oh
norte
0
8
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3
Syphilis &
Nietzsche’s
madness:
spirochetes
awake!
years and studies later we can say that
whether or not any treponemes are vis-
ible in the patient, penicillin (excepto
when given in an appropriate dose very
early in the course of the disease) is not
an effective and permanent cure.
Yet some physicians still insist that
penicillin and strong immune systems
de½nitively eliminate this disease; oth-
ers claim that treponemes ‘hide’ in tis-
sues where antibiotics are inaccessible.
Some speculate that tertiary syphilis
occurs when the syphilis treponemes
½nally manage to spread, after decades
of invisible stealth, and penetrate the
blood-brain barrier. Alas, most physi-
cians and syphilis scholars (and scien-
tists such as I) simply don’t know the
relationship between Treponema palli-
dum, syphilis symptoms, the immune
respuesta, the hiv virus, secondary
infection, sexual behavior, and the pu-
tative cures.
Finalmente, en 1998, the description of the
entire genome of Treponema pallidum,
one of the smallest bacterial genomes
conocido, with about nine hundred genes
en total, was published. Two other spiro-
chete genomes are known: Borrelia burg-
dorferi, with some eleven hundred genes,
and Leptospira, with nearly ½ve thousand
genes. Spirochetes like Leptospira, cual
are capable of life outside the body of
animals, have at least ½ve times as many
genes as the syphilis treponeme. El
leptospires all by themselves internally
produce all their necessary components
(proteínas, lipids, vitamins, etc.), mientras
Treponema pallidum does very little by it-
self; it survives only on the nourishment
of rich human tissue. Por esta razón, él
is likely that the syphilis treponeme lost
four-½fths of its genes as it became an
obligate parasite.
To identify any bacterium, the micro-
biologist needs to separate it and grow it
by itself, eso es, in isolation. A pesar de la
speci½c genome knowledge of the single
treponeme strain investigated, sin embargo,
the routine growth of any Treponema pal-
lidum in isolation (outside the warm,
nutritious mammalian body) has not
been achieved. Whether in organic mud
or changing human tissue, these spiro-
chetes depend utterly on their immedi-
ate environment. Desafortunadamente, más-
encima, no one has ever been able to induce
round bodies of Treponema pallidum to
form in isolation in a test tube, or to test
these round bodies in isolation for their
ability to resume growth.
My students and colleagues and I are
not experts on any disease bacteria, nor
on illnesses where symptoms are associ-
ated with visible spirochetes. Tenemos
been living closely with spirochetes for
very different reasons. Our interest is
in the possible role these wily bacteria
played in the evolution of larger forms
de la vida. Attempts to reconstruct the evo-
lutionary history of the nucleated cell,
the kind that divides by mitosis, tener
led us to study harmless spirochetes.
I suspect that the mitotic cell of ani-
mals, plants, and all other nucleated or-
ganisms (algae, water molds, ciliates,
slime molds, fungi, and some ½fty other
groups included in the Protoctista king-
dominación) share a common spirochete ances-
colina. I believe that with much help from
colleagues and students, we will soon
be able to show that certain free-swim-
ming spirochetes contributed their lithe,
snaky, sneaky bodies to become both the
ubiquitous mitotic apparatus and the fa-
miliar cilia of all cells that make such
‘moving hairs.’ Our lab work, coupled
with that of other scientists, reveals that
certain spirochetes when threatened by
death can and do form immobile, shiny
round bodies. Además, these round
bodies can hide and wait until condi-
tions become favorable enough for
growth to resume.
La caída de Dédalo 2004
123
yo
D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d
F
r
oh
metro
h
t
t
pag
:
/
/
d
i
r
mi
C
t
.
metro
i
t
.
/
mi
d
tu
d
a
mi
d
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d
/
yo
F
/
/
/
/
/
1
3
3
4
1
1
8
1
8
2
8
8
9
6
0
0
1
1
5
2
6
0
4
2
3
6
5
6
2
7
pag
d
.
F
b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t
t
oh
norte
0
8
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3
Note by
Lynn
Margulis
Desde 1977, a group of scientists and
students has been traveling to Laguna
Figueroa (called Lake Mormona by An-
glophones) near San Quintin, Baja Cali-
fornia Norte, México, to study microbial
mats. These communities of organisms
resemble ancient ones that left fossils
in rocks. They are the best evidence we
have of Earth’s oldest life-forms. Many
times we have brought microbial mat
samples back to our lab and left these
bottles of brightly colored mud on the
windowsill, where photosynthetic bacte-
ria powered the community. On several
occasions the bottles were assiduously
ignored through semesters of classes
and meetings. From time to time, nosotros
took tiny samples and placed them in
test tubes under conditions favorable
for growth. Various kinds of spirochetes
did begin to swim and grow; we suspect
they emerged from round bodies after
the samples were put into fresh, clean,
abundant liquid food. Spirochetes,
mostly unidenti½ed, persisted in hiding
in these bottles and jars for at least ten
años.
Today we study another microbial-
community sample, collected by Tom
Teal in 1990 at Eel Pond in Woods Hole,
Massachusetts. It is in our lab at the Uni-
versity of Massachusetts, Amherst in a
forty-liter glass jar. To it we add only
‘rain’ (distilled water), but with sunlight
as the energy source an abundance of life
still thrives. Long after no typical spiro-
chetes were seen in the sample, nosotros
added bits of either wet or dry mud to
food and water known to support the
activities of spirochetes, swimming and
growing. In a very few samples, dentro
about a week, armies of spirochetes
awoke from at least months of slumber.
We have observed and ½lmed spiro-
chetes in samples from all over the world
rounding up to form inactive bodies.
Continuation of work on spirochetes led
to our collaboration with Spanish col-
leagues at the delta of the Ebro River.
Professors Ricardo Guerrero and Isabel
Esteve had begun a strong research proj-
etc.. One stake, a stick in the mud labeled
#1 uab, marks a site on a microbial mat
that somehow seems exceptional. Many
fascinating organisms were taken from
that place, but none as interesting as the
large spirochetes we named Spirosymplo-
kos deltaeiberi. Whenever these easy-to-
see spirochetes are confronted with
harsh conditions–such as liquid that
does not support their growth, agua
that is too acidic, sugars that they cannot
digest, a temperature that is too high–
they make round, dormant bodies much
like those that Pillot and nearly all his
successors argue are dead.
The spheres of Spirosymplokos deltaeiberi
we studied look just like the round bod-
ies published by Norwegian microbiolo-
gists Oystein and Sverre-Henning Bror-
son. (They call them cysts.) The Bror-
sons showed that under unfavorable
conditions the Borrelia burgdorferi spi-
rochetes of Lyme disease make round
bodies. After weeks of dormancy, of no
growth and no sensitivity to antibiotics
and other chemical insults, these round
bodies revive. At high magni½cation
they look just like those of Spirosymplokos
deltaeiberi, only smaller. The Borrelia
burgdorferi round bodies convert to form
swimming spirochetes all at once and
begin to grow easily as soon as they are
placed into proper liquid food at the cor-
rect temperature and salt concentration.
The Brorsons con½rmed what we sus-
pectado: spirochete round bodies, like the
spheres of Spirosymplokos deltaeiberi, son
fully alive. Either mixed with other mud
organisms or growing by themselves in
isolation, just supply them with what
they need to grow and within minutes
they revert into swimming, active, feed-
En g, corkscrew spirochetes. Armies of
124
La caída de Dédalo 2004
yo
D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d
F
r
oh
metro
h
t
t
pag
:
/
/
d
i
r
mi
C
t
.
metro
i
t
.
/
mi
d
tu
d
a
mi
d
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d
/
yo
F
/
/
/
/
/
1
3
3
4
1
1
8
1
8
2
8
8
9
6
0
0
1
1
5
2
6
0
4
2
3
6
5
6
2
7
pag
d
.
F
b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t
t
oh
norte
0
8
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3
them awake from months of slumber.
Our work with Guerrero on Spirosym-
plokos deltaeiberi, coupled with our read-
ing of the literature (especially several
studies by the Brorsons), leads us to em-
phasize an ancient secret of spirochete
success: persistence via round bodies.
Nietzsche’s brain on January 3, 1889
experienced a transformation like that
of the microbial mat sample transferred
into new fresh food. Our interpretation
is that the spirochetes transformed from
dormant round bodies into the swim-
ming corkscrews in a very short time.
Deborah Hayden, sin embargo, is also cor-
recto. Nietzsche was inoculated in his
early twenties, and his long-standing
condition was con½rmed both by the
physician’s diagnostic on the medical
record (“Syphilit. Infect.”) y, at his
autopsy, by pox scars on his private
partes. The dormant spirochetes had
been hiding out in his tissues for over
thirty years. But on January 3, 1889 en
Turin, armies of revived spirochetes
munched on his brain tissue. The con-
sequence was the descent of Nietzsche
the genius into Nietzsche the madman
in less than one day.*
* James di Properzio and Brianne Goodspeed helped
importantly in the writing of this essay, and Celeste
Aisikainen aided in its preparation. The scienti½c
trabajar, aided by Dr. Mónica Solé, was funded in part
by the Alexander von Humboldt Prize, the Tauber
Fund, and the University of Massachusetts, Am-
herst (The College of Natural Sciences and Math-
ematics and the graduate school).
Syphilis &
Nietzsche’s
madness:
spirochetes
awake!
yo
D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d
F
r
oh
metro
h
t
t
pag
:
/
/
d
i
r
mi
C
t
.
metro
i
t
.
/
mi
d
tu
d
a
mi
d
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d
/
yo
F
/
/
/
/
/
1
3
3
4
1
1
8
1
8
2
8
8
9
6
0
0
1
1
5
2
6
0
4
2
3
6
5
6
2
7
pag
d
.
F
b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t
t
oh
norte
0
8
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3
La caída de Dédalo 2004