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The origins of syphilis are still debated. Traditionally, most experts believe that it arrived in Europe from the New World with the return of Columbus to Castile in 1493. However, recent DNA tests now question this. The word 'syphilis' did not exist until the publication of Girolama Fracastoro's poem of that name in 1530 and it was first used to directly describe the disease by Erasmus, when he wrote 'slave to that very strict mistress, Syphilis.' In the four decades before this, there was no specific name for the disease. The various terms that arose to describe it illustrate how conceptions of the disease could vary so much between different regions and how the name could reflect dominant belief systems. As contemporary Europeans were unaware of its origins, it became natural to blame others.
In 1519, the German knight Ulrich von Hutten wrote of the numerous names that had arisen. The names reflected regional animosities, religious conflicts and beliefs in the supernatural. The most prominent name for syphilis in this period was 'the French Disease.' This name stemmed from the conflict between Naples and France in 1493-5. The disease struck first in the French camp, seemingly originating from Spanish mercenaries who had been in contact with Columbus' crew within the previous year. The citizens of Naples, not wanting to be associated with the disease, blamed the French for this unwelcome import. The French, in turn, named it the 'Evil of Naples'. As syphilis spread throughout Europe, largely as a result of recently demobilized mercenaries returning home, so different names cropped up, each reflecting local animosities. The disease was so new and so virulent, explanations often had to be sought in the foreign as a way of scapegoating and geographically distancing societies from the outbreak.Thus, for example, in Holland it was 'the Spanish disease', the Russians called it 'the Polish sickness', whilst the Poles termed it 'the German sickness’, in Turkey it was ‘the Christian disease’, and later in Japan it was termed both ‘the Portugese disease’ and ‘the Chinese rash.’ Showing that old habits die hard, over 200 years later, when exploring the Pacific, Captian Cook found that Tahitians referred to syphilis as ‘Apa no Britannia - the British disease’, which Cook found strange as he thought the French were to blame.
Hutten also noted that religion was used to justify the calamity. Whether it was 'the Wrath of God, sent from Heaven as a Scourge for our Wickedness', or 'Job's Scab', people sought an otherworldly reason for the disease. Hutten, a militant Lutheran, used it to blame the Catholics, 'these Pretenders to the Oracles of God', but did question the strictly religious interpretations, writing that it was 'as if Nature had no Power to usher in any new Diseases.' Yet for many, syphilis was seen as a divine punishment because of the sinful behaviour and loose morals of the population. Unsafe sex was soon seen as a leading cause of syphilis and was forcefully put forward to justify the religious explanations. This suited the righteous severity of the Reformation amidst widespread moral panic.
The novelty and extreme contagion of the disease seemed to point to otherworldly causes. Hutten wrote that the arrival of syphilis was because of planetary factors, highlighting the anxieties of the unknown that the vast majority of the population felt. Blame was laid on the stars, of the occurrence of eclipses and on conjunctions of the planets, particularly that of Jupiter and Saturn in 1484 and of Mars and Saturn a year later. Astronomers also predicted that the outbreak would last for seven years but, as Hutten noted, although its severity did diminish after this time, the disease did not disappear altogether.
Whilst Hutten was aware that the disease was spread by 'copulating with a Diseased person', it was not until Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican friar writing in the late 1560s, that people became aware of the possible origins of syphilis. He was one of the first to show that it had been the Spaniards who had brought the disease back with them from the Americas. Casas spent a number of years on Hispaniola, partly researching the issue. After interviewing locals, he found that the disease had existed a long time before the Spanish arrival. Casas' account shows that for over seventy years, Europeans had had no idea where the disease had come from. As a result of the unsettled nature of Europe at the time, both politically and religiously, this was to give rise to such varied conceptions of what contemporaries could only see as a foreign or mysteriously unknown cause of the disease.
In the last few years, advances in DNA testing have begun to cast doubt on the idea that Europe was ‘virgin soil’ for syphilis in the 1490s and early 1500s. Some studies have tentatively shown that syphilis may have existed in Eastern Europe prior to Columbus’ voyage. Majander et al found ‘a possible Old World origin of syphilis’ after analysing DNA from four bodies from Estonia, the Netherlands and Finland which had lesions on the bones. They concluded that the DNA had various strains of genomes that were consistent with syphilis, possibly dating from the mid-1400s. However, Molly Zuckerman, a bioarchaeologist, has cast doubt on the dating, finding that the sample date ranges are wide and cannot fully disprove the Columbus hypothesis and stating ‘this paper does not provide that kind of golden prize of evidence of syphilis in the pre-Columbian period in the Old World.’ Similarly, Edward Holmes, an evolutionary epidemiologist, questioned the study, writing ‘It’s really interesting and really important that they’ve got these syphilis strains at around that time. What I’m less sure about is the exact time scale of the samples.’
Until definitive proof is found one way or the other, most likely from more advanced DNA testing in the future, the debate on the origins of the 1490s European syphilis pandemic will remain ongoing.
Selected references
Casas, Bartolomé , David M. Lantigua, and Lawrence A. Clayton. Bartolomé De Las Casas and the Defense of Amerindian Rights: A Brief History with Documents. , 2020. Internet resource.
Kerttu Majander et al. Ancient Bacterial Genomes Reveal a High Diversity of Treponema pallidum Strains in Early Modern Europe, Current Biology 2020.
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. "First ancient syphilis genomes decoded." ScienceDaily. 21 June 2018.
Porter, Roy S. The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present. London: HarperCollins, 1997.
Hutten, Ulrich , and Thomas Paynell. De Morbo Gallico: A Treatise of the French Disease, Publish'd Above 200 Years Past, by Sir Ulrich Hutten ... Translated Soon After into English, by a Canon of Marten-Abbye. Now Again Revised. , 2016.