I stand corrected.... Thank you.
I quickly misread, and somehow jumped to the conclusion that Columbus was being blamed for spreading the disease to the pristine “New World” -—— KNOWING is just the other way around.. I’ve grown so accustomed to the evil white man being blamed for everything.....
It appears the fine and noble pristine “native Americans” spread the scourge throughout the world using “visitors” as carriers..
This was NOT a “white man’s” disease originally, by a “noble native’s” disease.......
No problem. This strikes me as pretty old news - I’ve been telling people for years that syphylis is a New World disease, but I’m not sure where I learned it (I was glad to see the citation from the 20s confirming that). Odder still, about a month ago I got into an arguement about this very thing. Fourtunately I’d had more to drink, so I won.
One of the things that races trade is their special infections. We have only a few indicators of the total effect on human history, or, moe broadly, what they call evolution. How many kinds have been wiped out simply by a disease to which a population was not resistent. Certain, the Mexican population was decimated by disease during the 16th Century.