Karen Blixen - Isak Dinesen home

Question 9: Syphilis, malaria and Bror Blixen?

Q. I was not aware, until reading Out of Isak Dinesen by Linda Donelson, that so many people infected with syphilis survive unharmed. So I had always puzzled over the fact that while Karen Blixen had such troubles with the disease Bror Blixen did not. I did discover that malaria, or rather the profound changes in the blood caused by malaria, was a fairly effective cure for syphilis. Although I have never seen this fact connected with this story I have come to assume that Bror Blixen had enough episodes of malaria to drive out the syphilis.(from: The Malaria Capers - by Robert S. Desowitz) "In 1927, J. Wagner von Jauregg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work in treating syphilis using malaria. Patients were inoculated with a type of malaria to produce fevers that would literally burn up the temperature-sensitive syphilis bacteria. After three or four cycles of the fever, the patient was administered quinine for a relatively rapid parasitological cure for the malaria.   Malaria therapy for syphilis, using monkey and human parasites, continued until the mid-1950s when it was replaced by antibiotic chemotherapy."--Brian Hood

A. Karen Blixen underwent fever treatments but the "fever" was introduced mechanically in a steam bath. She had such a bad time with malaria in her first year in Africa (1914) that she probably refused the approach you describe.

Syphilis, like malaria, is much harder on those who are in poor physical condition or undernourished. Bror had a robust constitution, but this theory about malaria is worth entertaining. We don't have evidence that he suffered from malaria in 1915 when he had syphilis, but still....

See also "Karen blixen's Medical History" and "Question 36: Where did Karen Blixen get syphilis?"