Origins of European syphilis revealed as key explorer induced critical outbreak
Christopher Columbus returned with the unwelcome souvenir after his travels in the Americas, new research claims, causing a serious outbreak of the killer illness
Explorer Christopher Columbus brought syphilis to Europe, according to boffins. The navigator returned with the unwelcome souvenir after his travels in the Americas, new research claims.
A serious outbreak of the killer illness raged across Europe for five years from spring 1495. It left an army assembled by Charles VIII of France riddled with the nasty illness before spreading across the country. Now historians have tallied it up with the time Columbus and his crew came back from their early jaunts.
Researcher Dr Casey Kirkpatrick said: “We’ve known for some time that syphilis-like infections occurred in the Americas for millennia. But from the lesions alone it’s impossible to fully characterise the disease.”
Dr Kirkpatrick, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, strongly believes Columbus was to blame. Others have previously argued that the sexually transmitted disease existed in Eurasia but went undetected.
But the new research, published in the journal Nature, backs the Columbus theory. If left untreated the STD rips through the body, sending people mad and causing problems in the heart, skin, bones, testicles and all other organs.
Dr Kirsten Bos, also from the Max Planck Institute, said: “The data clearly support a root in the Americas for syphilis and its known relatives. Their introduction to Europe starting in the late 15th century is most consistent with the data.
“While indigenous American groups harboured early forms of these diseases, Europeans were instrumental in spreading them around the world.”
Former US president Abraham Lincoln and his wife contracted syphilis, as did famous writers Oscar Wilde and James Joyce. Many believe Adolf Hitler went bonkers after living with the illness for years but there is no conclusive proof.
Some academics have argued that the German dictator waged his genocide after catching the STD from a prostitute. There is “ample circumstantial evidence” for the theory, according to psychiatrist Dr Bassem Habeeb.
He previously told the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ annual meeting: “If Hitler’s life is looked at through the lens of a syphilis diagnosis, one clue leads to another until a pattern of infection and progressive infection emerges.
“A disease that may have defined him from youth as an outsider and that progressively ravaged his body and mind.”
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