Love in the time of syphilis

The Chinese, “they die like flies; the ocean bed must look like a Chinese graveyard!” “What do they die of?”… “Everything. Burning stomachs and feeble bones, rotten lungs and sick brains.” “And syphilis?”… “They die from what’s in and over the belly not under it!” On a ship full of opium and Chinamen, Lisbon’s finest surgeon, Antonio Henriques Maria, stumbles upon the chance he’s been desperately, frantically, hopelessly seeking — a chance to find a cure to syphilis, the cursed pox which is sure to claim his father. Holding onto this one thread, Maria heads off to China in search of the Yellow Emperor’s cure.

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