Columbus and the Indians

Dr. Webster's invitation to review the story of Columbus and his relation to the origin of syphilis has given me the impetus to reconsider the subject for the third time. I went over it first nearly forty years ago, in 1934. As a junior instructor in bacteriology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York at that time, I was asked by F.P. Gay, the head of the department, to write the chapter on "Spirochetes and Spirochetal Diseases" in what emerged a year later as the bulky textbook, Agents of Disease and Host Resistance. In the intervening years I included this topic in lectures to medical and dental students; and, like most others with an interest in syphilis, I kept on using pretty much the same story, being generally too busy with things that seemed more urgent to go back and reconsider it again, even though I was aware that doubts were accumulating in the literature. When I wrote a book on VD for the general reader, Microbes and Morals, which appeared in the fall of 1973, I returned to the literature for the second time, reassessed those doubts, and decided that the weight of the evidence was against the Columbian origin of syphilis in Europe. For this third occasion I have gone back to the record once more, or to as much of it as I have in my own collection of books, reprints, and notes.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website

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