Tomorrow is Columbus Day. Some will celebrate the great explorer as seen in American texbooks, others will protest against honoring a genocidal Columbus. But who will look at the sick, shackled Columbus, returning to Spain in disgrace--the Columbus who may have been one of the first Conquistadors to bring syphilis back to Europe from the New World?
From the Chapter one of POX:
Medical writers have attributed Columbus’s physical complaints to ailments such as typhus, rheumatic heart disease, and Reiter’s Syndrome. It was not until well into the twentieth century that Thomas Parran, one of the originators of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study and later Surgeon General of the United States under Franklin D. Roosevelt, first suggested that Columbus’s death was due to syphilis: “With his whole body dropsical from the chest downward, like that which is caused by injury to the valves of the heart, his limbs paralyzed, and his brain affected—all symptoms of late, fatal syphilis—he died on 20 May 1506.” He was draped in the gray robe of the order of St. Francis, poor, fallen from royal grace, and semi-mad. His last words were: “In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum.” Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.
Other researchers since Parran have cautiously raised the possibility of syphilis. Christopher Wills asked: “Was Columbus himself suffering from syphilis, and does this explain his progressive mental derangement? Certainly when he returned to Spain from his final voyage at the end of 1504, he was clearly mentally ill and his legs were paralyzed.” Philip Marshall Dale ventured: “The sickness may have been syphilis.” Anton Luger concurred: “His symptoms resemble those observed in general paresis or in taboparesis, both conditions of late syphilis.” Notes to follow:
A 500 year battle: did syphilis exist in Europe prior to Columbus and coincidentally mutate to a virulent form exactly upon the return of his ships from the first voyage, or was brought back by those sailors? The American origin argument currently favors American, with the discovery of syphilitic bones in the Dominican Republic by paleo-anthropologist Bruce Rothschild and his colleagues. A PBS special in the "Secrets of the Dead" series hypothesized that pre-Columbian syphilitic bones were found in Hull in England and several other port towns in Europe-- but not so fast, says Bruce Rothschild; those bones are more likely the result of a non-venereal spirochetal disease known as yaws.
The venerable LANCET published the Hull results, but declined to publish Bruce Rothschild's letter pointing out why he thought the bones found in that monastery were not syphilitic. The PBS special included an interview with Rothschild and with Charlotte Roberts from the Hull project, but did not give Rothschild time for rebuttal--hence, anyone viewing the PBS special was left with the impression that the 500 year fight had been left with the European position in ascendency.
Rothschild uses the word "pseudo-science" and calls the bones he found in the Dominican Republic to be "the smoking gun." When I asked him if about Columbus's hypothesized Pox, he responded: "If Columbus got syphilis, it was certainly from his visits to the New World."
Could testing Columbus's bones give the answer to his hypothesized syphilis? Maybe so -- if the team that gave us the gene map of T. pallidum perfect a DNA test. That is -- assuming the bones that are thought be those of Columbus are really his, and not those of his brother.
Next step: it would be interesting to know what Charlotte Roberts, the one interviewed on the PBS special (wearing, someone pointed out to me, earrings that were delightfully spirochetal), would respond to Bruce Rothschild's unpublished letter to the Lancet. He sent me the letter, which I could post here, with his permission.
Charlotte Roberts website is:
http://www.dur.ac.uk/c.a.roberts/
Contact information:
Telephone: (+44) (0)191 374 1124 (from March 2003 0191-334-1154)
Fax: (+44) (0)191 374 3619 (from March 2003 0191-334-1101)
Email: mailto:C.A.Roberts@durham.ac.uk
Department of Archaeology
University of Durham
South Road
DURHAM
DH1 3LE
Best book on the violent Columbus: American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Background information on Columbus's health: A.M Fernandez de Ybarra, "The Medical History of Christopher Columbus," JAMA, 22, no. 18 (5 May 1894). Sometime I will scan that article in and post it here; it's quite remarkable, being written in 1894, without mention of syphilis. That interpretation came later, with Parran and others, who knew their POX.
For a discussion of American textbooks who glorify Columbus without mentioning his darker side, the one seen in Stannard's book, see Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen.
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