Columbus abandoned this locality and proceeded to found the city of Isabella, when his followers suffered much from the climate and fevers ; this was in March, 1494, for which period Irving observes that many Spaniards suffered also under the torments of a disease hitherto unknown to them, the scourge as was supposed of their licentious intercourse with the Indian females ; but the origin of which, whether American or European, has been a subject of great dispute." Here we have but a supposition, and my firm impression is, that had either of the diseases been known to the Indians, the Spaniards, who were very good chroniclers, would have given some details. We now come to the latter part of 1494, when Pedro Margarite and others ran away from Isabella to Spain. " Some ascribed his abrupt departure to the fear of a severe military investigation of his conduct; I will here advert to a singular story, told me lately by Hen--, consul for
a foreign power to Mexico, as connected with a friend of his, who died at Orizaba. His friend had exposed himself to contagion with a Quarterona. A few hours afterwards the member began to swell, causing excruciating pain ; at the extremity there was a crown or ruff of various colours. Herr-- went for a doctor,
who, on examining the patient, said that he must have been with the said Quarterona, who had communicated the same to three or four others, and they had died; that it was his opinion that his present patient would share the same fate-the individual did die in a few days. The Quarterona was arrested and sent to a house of incurables; as to her fate there is no information. Herr-- informed me that this class of venereal is called the cristalina, or crystallised syphilis; that, a few similar cases had occurred in the city of Mexico ; and that something of the sort had formerly been known in Cadiz. He also gave me the following as the supposed origin of this cristalina. In 1403, Columbus, ere he left the West Indies to bring to Europe the news of his discovery of the New World, erected the fort of Navidad in Hispanola, leaving some of his followers there. On his return from Spain, he found that the whole of them had been killed or had died. It is said that some of them were affected with syphilis brought from Spain, and gave the disease to the Indian women with whom they had lived, and from these sprung the cristalina, which I think to be very doubtful.
In 1500 we find syphilis called in Scotland pokes and Spanyie pockis; but it was generally denominated the French disease. Italians, Germans, and English spoke of it as the disease of Naples. The Dutch, Flemings, Portuguese, and Moors as the Spanish malady; and the Spaniards to this day call it Galico or French disease ; but we never hear it quoted as the American disease.
Gonorrhoea was in full vigour in London in 1430, and known as clap or brenning, and its existence spoken of a century earlier, in the time of Richard II.
There can be no doubt that syphilis existed extensively at Naples, and was brought into Western Europe with the return of Charles VIII from that country in May 1495. I may here observe that when Columbus returned to Europe from the New World in May 1493, there is no allusion at that date that syphilis was brought from America. When Sir. R. Alcock was asked by a friend of mine as to the existence of syphilis in Japan, he said it was known as the Portuguese disease, and was common there.
However, as regards the New World, history gives no evidence as to the disease having been brought from there, and the non-existence of both of the diseases amongst those Indians at the present time removed from proximity to the whites and mixed breeds is, to me, a still more convincing proof that syphilis, as it has been well known before and since the end of the 15th century, is not of New World origin.
Benzoni, who was very early in the West Indies and in Peru with Pizarro, speaks of the Morbus Gallicus, or French disease. Solaz-zano, Monarquia Indiana, lib. i, c. 4, p. 24, says it is most doubtful and uncertain that the venereal disease was introduced from the Old World into the New. He calls syphilis " the French or Bubatic." Frezier in 1719-14, in alluding to the hospitals in Lima, mentions San Lazaro for the cure of lepers and such as have venereal distemper.
About 1742, the Ulloas, who were very close observers, being at Lima, thus allude to syphilis : " The venereal disease is equally common in Peru, as in those countries we have already mentioned" (they had just come from New Granada and Quito); " it is, indeed, general in all that part of America; and but little attention is given to it until arrived to a great height, the general custom in all those parts." As to the Indians, he says, i, p. 420 : " Though the venereal disease is so common in the country (among?t the Spaniards and mixed breeds), it is seldom known among them (the Indians), and, when observed, has been communicated by the whites or Mestizoes."
Describing Quito, the Ulloas say: "The venereal disease is here so common, that few persons are free from it; and many are afflicted with it without any of its external symptoms. Even little children, incapable by their age of having contracted it actively, have been known to have been attacked in the same manner by it as persons who have acquired it by their debauchery. Accordingly, there is no reason for caution in concealing this distemper, its commonness effacing the disgrace that in other countries attends it. The principal cause of its prevalence is negligence in the cure. Few are salivated for it, or will undergo the trouble of a radical cure."
When first in South America, I was astonished to hear females say (sometimes rather in confidence) of any of their male acquaintances who complained of being unwell, there being no visible sign of illness- " pues es galiquente, y quizas de sus padres", he has been syphilised, perhaps, from his parents.
Velasco, in his excellent Historia de Quito, i, 185, says, when speaking of the Indians of that country, " Amongst other diseases, they are free from venereal, which is falsely attributed to them, but brought to the country by the Europeans."
Speaking of the Creeks and Cherokees in the United States, Bar-tram, who wrote in 1790 (Amer. Ethno. Soc. Trans., 43, 1853), observes that they have the venereal in some of its stages. In some places it is scarcely known, and in none rises to that virulency which we. call small-pox, unless sometimes amongst the white traders, who themselves say, as well as the Indians, that it might be eradicated if the white traders did not carry it with them to the natives when they return with their merchandize ; these contract the disorder before they set off, and it generally becomes virulent by the time they arrive, when they apply to the Indian doctors to get themselves cured. " I am inclined," says Bartram, " to believe that this disease originated in America (?) from the variety of remedies found among the Indians, all of which are vegetable. I have imagined that the disease is more prevalent as well as more malignant among the northern tribes, because of their closer proximity to the whites. The vegetables are, various species of iris, croton, or styllingra or the yaw-weed, smilax, bignonia, and lobelia syphilitica."
In Wilcocke's Buenos Ayres, p. 412: "The syphilitic disease, though very common amongst the inhabitants of the Spanish race, is seldom known among the Indians, and then only when communicated by the foreigner."
Table of contents
Previous Next
W.M. Bollaert, 1864
