No, I’m not looking for medical advice. But way back when I started a thread on diseases and ailments in literature, but I believe it’s gone to Archive Heaven.
I am rereading Colleen McCullough’s Fortune’s Favorites, getting myself back into her world of Ancient Rome before I read her last book in the series, Antony and Cleopatra. Fortune’s Favorites covers Sulla before and after his dictatorship and the rise of Pompey and Caesar.
In this book, the beautiful and vain Sulla has come down with a number of ailments. I believe I figured out the diabetes (sudden desire for sweets, weight gain, tingling in the arms and legs, followed by rapid weight loss and unquenchable thirst*) but there’s a skin condition that’s got me stumped.
Sulla is described as having very fair skin, almost white, but he’s not an albino. He burns rather than tans, and was told early on by Gauis Marius to always wear a floppy hat to protect his face. Well, during one ceremony, he couldn’t wear the hat, and burned badly. During his treatment for diabetes, he was immersed in mineral spring water, which “broke down” his face, causing him horrible, maddening, but cyclical itching.
It was so bad he would drink himself senseless to keep from scratching his face to ribbons.
His skin was cured with was I can only assume is lanolin (sheep fat was rendered into an ointment.) At first I thought it was skin cancer, but IIRC, skin cancer isn’t cured with lanolin. What it eczema?
Also, at the end Sulla dies rather spectacularly He basically begins uncontrollable vomiting of blood, so I can guess his liver was shot from his heavy drinking?
I’m sure a mod will move this…does it go in GQ, Cafe Society, or IMHO?
*His diabetes is controlled by staying away from fruits and sweets and drinking sour, almost vinegary wine, so I would guess he doesn’t have the insulin-dependent diabetes? Else he would have died sooner?