Not another rabbit hole!
I'd always understood that GPI was the long term, and incurable, effect of syphilitic infection.
There's loads online and it does refer to 19th century GPs not having the knowledge to diagnose syphilis in its very early stages, which is when you need to diagnose it even now, and then not having effective means to treat it anyway. It may therefore be that he was either infected or actually unwell for some time without the cause being clear and when it was, it was too late.
Presumably also, he will have passed the infection on to his wife, who will have inevitably met an undignified end herself in time.
Can you direct your enquirer to the Martin Freeman episode of WDYTYA? There was a lot about it in there.
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"Keep your dreams as clean as silver"
John Stewart 1939 - 2008
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