Posted on 01/14/2008 5:31:47 PM PST by Sub-Driver
New study blames Columbus for syphilis spread
By Julie Steenhuysen 13 minutes ago
New genetic evidence supports the theory that Christopher Columbus brought syphilis to Europe from the New World, U.S. researchers said on Monday, reviving a centuries-old debate about the origins of the disease.
They said a genetic analysis of the syphilis family tree reveals that its closest relative was a South American cousin that causes yaws, an infection caused by a sub-species of the same bacteria.
"Some people think it is a really ancient disease that our earliest human ancestors would have had. Other people think it came from the New World," said Kristin Harper, an evolutionary biologist at Emory University in Atlanta.
"What we found is that syphilis or a progenitor came from the New World to the Old World and this happened pretty recently in human history," said Harper, whose study appears in journal Public Library of Science Neglected Tropical Diseases.
She said the study lends credence to the "Columbian theory," which links the first recorded European syphilis epidemic in 1495 to the return of Columbus and his crew.
"When you put together our genetic data with that epidemic in Naples in 1495, that is pretty strong support for the Columbian hypothesis," she said.
Syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum, starts out as a sore, but progresses to a rash, fever, and eventually can cause blindness, paralysis and dementia.
Most recent evidence of its origins comes from skeletal remains found in both the New World and the Old World. Chronic syphilis can leave telltale lesions on bone. "It has a worm-eaten appearance," Harper said in a telephone interview.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Disease is a powerful factor in history. The Black Death came from the east, brought by Italian traders. AIDs came from Africa, brought by a sailor to San Franciscon, i think, where it took root in the special population of that city.
You really can blame “bush “ for this!
Couple of years ago my son had a college sociology class that he skipped for a week and came back on a test day he forgot about and didn’t study for. It was multiple guess so he chose all the answers that demonized white male society or victimized minorities and women.
He scored and 80, good enough for a “B”.
Bush didn't do it????
Yawn, somebody got grant money for this.
The theory that Christopher Columbus’s crew carried syphilis back to Europe from the New World has sprung another leak. Skeletons recently unearthed from a medieval friary in the U.K. show unmistakable signs of the disease, researchers say, suggesting that England was hit by the scourge at least 50 years before Columbus’s voyage.
The so-called Columbian theory of syphilis’s spread was based on finding skeletal remains bearing the signature of the disease—thickened leg and arm bones and skull scars—in a suggestive pattern. Although 18th and 19th century archaeologists had discovered plenty of diseased remains at prehistoric sites in the Americas, they found no traces of the disease in European bones until a major epidemic hit Europe about 1500, just after Columbus returned from his 1493 voyage. In the last decade, however, researchers have unearthed about a dozen pre-Columbian skeletons in England and Ireland that also showed signs of the disease. But until recently the oddball cases weren’t enough to sink the Columbian theory.
I heard this in 1960.
/who gives a rats rear.
Alternate headline:
Columbus Crew infected with Syphilis by Indians Possible cause of Naples Epidemic
My guess is we won't see that one.
I believe it was a flight attendant.
Columbus sailed the oceans blue and spread to the world the genital flu.
New World History.
- Leonardo DaVinci
- Michael Angelo
- William Shakespeare
Etc, etc.
I guess they won't be hijacking Columbus.
He has become the "boogey man" of the left.
Syphilis is an infective disease due to the entrance into the body of a specific virus. It is nearly always communicated from one individual to another by contact infection, the discharge from a syphilitic lesion being the medium through which the virus is transmitted, and the seat of inoculation is almost invariably a surface covered by squamous epithelium. The disease was unknown in Europe before the year 1493, when it was introduced into Spain by Columbus' crew, who were infected in Haiti, where the disease had been endemic from time immemorial (Bloch).
So, Christopher Columbus discovered the bathhouses in San Francisco? (Don’t touch that! You don’t know where it’s been!)
Tobacco and syphilis. I’d say the Indians have pretty much had their revenge.
Yeah. But it's still America's fault.
This was long understood to be the case before the leftists flipped history on its head and claimed the reverse was so..Ask your kids -- chances are their teachers have told them that the Europeans brought it to the helpless healthy New World natives.
Didn’t he get blamed for the Motoons also? And Global Warming, and the Krakatoa eruption, and the failure of Golden Compass, and ...
I thought it came back from the Middle East with returning crusaders. Maybe that was another STD.
Beat me to it. I read some good stuff on that. They made some persuasive scientific arguments that it is more likely that syphilis was carried from new world to old.
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