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Indeed. I'm a historian of medicine and sometimes think that premodern healers get a bad rap. Yes, some of the cures you find in medieval or early modern medici
by benbreen 8y ago
Indeed. I'm a historian of medicine and sometimes think that premodern healers get a bad rap. Yes, some of the cures you find in medieval or early modern medicine are absurd (like "bleeding until syncope"). But once in awhile you run into something like this, from a 17th century Portuguese physician named Duarte Madeira Arraiz:
"They spread the sickness throughout the world, each army bringing it to its respective country... and it was related by Christopher Columbus of his discoveries in the Occidental Indies to the King of Spain, that in the lands he discovered he encountered many Indian men and women who suffered from the disease of the morbo gallico [syphilis], and so those among the soldiers and men of arms who had communication with the Indian women and with the 'mulheres publicas' of the land easily spread this contagion to the greater part of the Spanish army, and from thence, to the French."
He comes pretty close to anticipating germ theory here, arguing that syphilis was sexually transmitted and correctly theorizing that it had New World origins and was spread by European colonization. These people weren't dumb.
- Rotdhizon 8y agoAre you saying that syphilis was widespread among native Americans? Post aside, that is a fascinating fact.
- rb808 8y agoLooks likely but not proven. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syphilis#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syphilis#History It is interesting. It was terrible that early explorers carried diseases that killed millions in the regions they went to. Its reassuringly symmetric that diseases went the other way as well. I didn't know that 100k+ still die from it every year.
- Maultasche 8y agoYes, syphilis was first noticed when it started to spread around Europe in the 1490s not long after sustained contact with the Americas. So it's likely that it did come from the Americas, but it hasn't been proven. It's also possible that it coincidentally originated in Europe around the same time and spread to the Americas. By the time people started looking into where it had come from, it was widespread in both places and the exact origins were obscure. Nobody appears to have recorded the prevalence of syphilis in the Americas during the early years of European contact.
- ams6110 8y agoWhether it was or wasn't, there's no real reason not to think that each population transmitted diseases to the other, who lacked natural or acquired immunity.