Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

the other remaining vessel in an Atlantic storm and put in at Bayona
on the north-western Spanish coast, before sailing on to Palos. The
first well-recorded outbreak of what we know as syphilis occurred in
Naples in 1495. There is some documentary evidence to link the
return of Columbus’ crew, in 1494 from Haiti, to the outbreak. This is
called the Columbian theory. Although some hold that syphilitic
symptoms were described by Hippocrates in its venereal/tertiary form
(Aphorisms book 3, chapter XX): ‘that in the summer ulceration of the
mouth, skin eruptions, and mortification of the privy parts occurs’).
Some passages in the Bible could refer to syphilis, especially Exodus
20:5 where the sins of the father are visited unto the third and fourth
generation. A tomb (nr 1) of the ancient cemetery of Costebelle,
attributed to the 4th century AD, contained the skeleton of a pregnant
female and that of her fœtus in the pelvic cavity. This was aged seven
months, was almost complete and showed an exceptional example of
bony lesions suggestive of infection. Its pathology suggested the
likelihood of early congenital syphilis. This case raises the question of
the theory of the importation of venereal disease into Europe, about a
1,000 years later, by the crews of Christopher Columbus in 1493 AD.
The fœtus of Costebelle is not an isolated example: other osteoarchaeological
findings make a case for the existence of a treponeme
(venereal or non venereal) in Europe before 1493 (Palfi et al., 1995).
The idea that syphilis or another treponema–yaws, spread from
Saharan Africa and then either, became more virulent or that there
was an alteration in the organism of yaws is called the Unitarian
theory (Waugh, 1982). The subject is debated fully in ‘The Origin and
Antiquity of Syphilis: Paleopathological Diagnosis and Interpretation’
(Baker & Armelagos, 1988).
‘In the Month of December,’ (as Nicholaus Leonitius reports, ‘writing
of this disease [syphilis]) when K. Charles the viij. of France besieged
Naples with a puissant [powerful] army, where he remained certain
months, some of the Spaniards came to him, of the which
Christophorus Columbus was chief, and spread this pernicious seed,
and termed it the Indian sickness, which, has had his course since, not
only amongst the Spaniards, who call it the Italian sickness, but also
among the Italians, who call it the malady of Naples, not without cause:
for it began first to flourish in Naples. Amongst the Frenchmen it is
called the Spanish sickness, in England the Great Pox, in Scotland the
Spanish Fleas, and that for two causes, the one, because it first
occurred amongst the Spaniards.’