Europe didn't catch the pox from Christopher Columbus – scientists The skeleton of a six-year-old infant unearthed in Austria is challenging the theory that syphilis was imported into Europe from the New World by the ship's crew of Christopher Columbus. The Austrian skeleton in its grave The well-preserved remains (above) were found in a cemetery in St. Pölten, some 65km west of Vienna, by …
This is not the first finding, though this one is probably the best preserved one. I have seen various articles on this as far back as 20 years ago.
Syphilis was around before Columbus, but not as prevalent as during the 16-17th century for a completely different reason. A lot of late stage 2 and stage 3 syphilis symptoms are similar to the symptoms for leprosy. As result in the early middle ages most syphilitics ended up in the leprosy hospices. These were run by the church (Dominicans if memory serves me right).
A pope edict closed down the church run leprosy hospices shortly before the first expedition by Christopher Columbus. As a result along with leprosy stage 2 and stage 3 syphilis sufferers were thrown out onto the streets to fend for themselves including resorting to the "oldest profession". The rest as they say is history.
@ Voyna i Mor, Where ever you live you have the right to demand that the system you pay for is capable of providing affordable education and health care to the whole community. Democracy and lack of education doesn't mix well. Should you Americans not by now understand why you are so hopelessly behind the rest of the western world when it comes to education and health care. Please wake up.
I think you are being over sensitive.
The pope believes himself to be chosen by God and infallible, while is in fact chosen by a series of backroom deals among a group of old men who he appointed.
I can't see why you thought there may be any suggestion of a similarity the the American president.
That, and there's also many references in surviving documents requesting or granting added funds for "pox houses", indicating local outbreaks of [something] with an added complication of "madness" well before Columbus. Not a (medieval) medical opinion, but accountants have always had ... a tendency of accuracy... when it comes to tracking money, especially if they got a cut. Which makes for some great, if somewhat dull, historical research. It's well possible there have (always) been instances of syphilis in Europe, but that due to the then extent segregation practices and generally limited mobility of people outbreaks were local and ultimately limited.
It is entirely possible Sailors did introduce a different, and more virulent, strain into Europe which then became epidemic. Not unlike Y. Pestis, which did occur in Europe in a low instance and relatively non-lethal form, until the more virulent and rather notorious strains were introduced from Asia.
'Pox' referred to smallpox, chicken pox, measles, gonnorhea, sure, a generic word used for many other diseases. Even bad acne.
Not flu or colds, not mumps, not whooping cough.
The symptoms of syphilis would never have led to it being called a 'pox', because they are invisible.
You're probably onto something here... Is there any other possible correlation available as bacteria do mutate? We're now in the era of resistant bacteria due to misuse and over prescribing or antibiotics. Perhaps there was something back then that forced the mutation such as some other population movement or environmental factor?
What about before the leprosy hospices? What was the method of isolation?
I'd think your explanation is more plausible than Columbus's crew being the reason.
One other way to look at the problem is to look at the genetic diversity of syphilis in the Americas as compared to Europe and Asia. If it originated in the Americas and was imported by a few individual sailors infected in the Americas, you would expect the disease in the Americas to be much, much more genetically diverse than it is in Eurasia.
If on the other hand there is little difference in the genomes of the two populations of syphilis, then the hypothesis that the disease was ubiquitous is much more likely. Syphilis is a spirochaete bacterium, so ought to have a passably large genome, unlike a minimalist virus, so this sort of analysis ought to be easier to do.
@Dr Dan Holdsworth - looking at genetic diversity to identify origin...
This could be an interesting study, but you'd probably want to study samples pre-Jet Age, (or, possibly, pre-World War I) when mass human travel stirred up the bacterial populations. Then you have the problem of DNA decay in old samples.
Misuse of antibiotics ... not to mention the obscenity in industrial farming, except for Japan, many east Asians, including Chinese friends, take them like popcorn at the slightest hint of, for example, a cold.
Used to be able to get them without a prescription in many places (Thailand, Korea, Hong Kong from direct seeing).
I remember seeing a documentary some years ago (?when "Horizon" was still something worth watching) that had identified Treponema pallidum in skeletons from one of the ancient cities around the Med (can't remember if it was Greek, Egyptian or one of the others). The theory was that it had been a benign skin disease that changed its behaviour due to the increased wearing of clothes. I can't find anything online at the moment, so maybe it was rapidly disproved.
Syphilis is merely the most terrible of four related diseases: Syphilis, yaws, bejel, and pinta, caused by four subspecies of Treponema pallidum. Yaws is mostly tropical, and easily cured these days. Pinta is found mainly in South America and the Caribbean. Bejel is mainly found in the Middle East, and is somewhat a non-venereal syphilis that doesn't affect the brain. Yaws are thought to be the oldest (1.8 million years) form. Around 1415 Henry the Navigator, and his father and brothers, conquered Ceuta, in northern Morocco, which had long been a port filled with Barbary Pirates.
Even if syphilis and pinta were new world diseases only Columbus could have brought home, Henry was poking around hotbeds of yaws and bejel. (Trade with the Middle East had been going on for a long time by then, but Henry intensified exploration further south.)
If this circa 1415 skeleton really does have diagnostic lesions, they could have been caused by yaws, or less likely, by bejel. Voland's Right Hand suggests syphilis could have been mistaken for leprosy, which sounds reasonable. And Grikath makes sense in suggesting that while it was there before, sailors could have brought back a more potent form. If there are at least four flavors of the disease, there may well be local differences in virulence.
Those making politically-correct whinges about Columbus should remember that chocolate is a new-world food.
Chocolate? In the form brought back from the Americas circa 1500? A cause for diabetes? Better brush up on your facts. Chocolate back then wasn't anything like a Cadbury milk chocolate bar. And I rather doubt old Chris brought back any chocolate. He only got as as far as the Caribbean and chocolate comes form the mainland.
But cane sugar, from India, predates chocolate in Europe. Personally I'd be blaming diabetes on sugar. I'm led to believe it was the crack cocaine of Baroque Europe.
And on the topic of new world foods: there's also tomatoes, chilis, and pumpkins, on top of maize (corn), potatoes, and chocolate already mentioned. Makes me wonder what the Indians (as in India Indians) would be eating today instead of curry. Or what the indigenous peoples of sub-Saharan Africa would be eating instead of corn and pumpkins.
You have a very good point, which often makes me wonder. What did Indians (sub-continent) use before chili came along? I know that hot food is not everywhere and always, maybe it was mainly like Hare Krishna prasad, which is tasty.
So many regions, that, if so, would only be so in some places.
The Hare Krishnas also use potatoes a lot.
Cacao was not used as a sweet before, but as a savoury.
If this circa 1415 skeleton really does have diagnostic lesions, they could have been caused by yaws, or less likely, by bejel.
Respectfully, that's bollocks.
Although as you say there are other trepanomal diseases, syphilis is the only one spread congenitally (ie vertical transmission from mother to child) and the only one known to cause dental issues. In particular, these characteristic dental appearances in combination are sufficient to make the diagnosis. And all 4 are not just treatable but eminently eradicable these days; the issues are more to do with providing health care systems to non rich, non powerful people for the others and stigma for syphilis.
I'm reminded of Mill's single black swan disproving 'all swans are white'. Not that this finding is particularly unexpected; the evidence is mixed both ways.
Note that contact with North American natives was already common, as the rich fisheries around Newfoundland were already being exploited by Europeans well before Columbus set out - but under tight commercial secrecy.
Another illness produces bone changes very similar to Syphilis - this accounts for the not-actually-similar articles twenty years ago, as those skeletons at first seemed to prove that S had existed long before contact with the Americas - but it turned out to be another disease.
Syphilis was the most common cause of death in the U.S. as late as 1940 - but was rarely mentioned in the death certificate as listing the final symptoms spared family feelings.
The evidence for Syphilis originating in the new world is genetic, based on DNA analysis.
I would think there is a burden on any study that attempts to prove otherwise to be based on evidence of that standard.
"Diagnostic" lesions, which by their nature are based on a subjective categorization, don't meet that standard.
I'm always unimpressed by "genetic evidence, so it must be true!" arguments. The phylogenetics (your DNA analysis) has its own flaws and assumptions. Diagnostic lesions would seem to be the basis of diagnosis (alright, microbiological evidence would be better), so it is reasonable to believe that they are a higher standard of proof than extrapolating current genomes backwards in time.
Just cos something's expensive and high tech doesn't make it right.
> Life was hard enough at the time.
It was pretty bad later too - in Victorian society it was commonly seen that a reliable cure for syphilis was to have sex with a virgin - preferrably as young as possible.
And pimps would sell the same girl over and over again as a virgin since that commanded a premuim price.
Not a nice time.
This story seems to come around about every 20 years with a different set of skeletons. As I recall, the 1990s version had Irish skeletons. Anyone know what happened to them?
As for Newfoundland, evidently the Area 51 of the Western Hemisphere, I'm not sure the evidence on that one is all that tight. The presence of land was a less important matter, depending on how you salted your cod, than the presence of the cod themselves. And did the men of Bristol (or Nantes or Lisbon) say "they fell off the truck"?
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