On syphilis and science

https://merangue.com/9zq6cnumssv Yesterday, I commented that science is based on the clash of competing theories as well as experimental studies. However, sometimes the studies lead into subjects that cross over into our understanding of history. One such subject is the study of the origins of history. Archeology magazine writes the following in an article:

https://blog.extraface.com/2024/08/07/f4r1hdzyt Debate about the origins of syphilis has continued for nearly 500 years, ever since early sixteenth-century Europeans blamed each other, referring to it variously as the Venetian, Naples, or French disease. One hypothesis assumes a New World origin, and holds that sailors who accompanied Columbus and other explorers brought the disease back to Europe. Another explanation is that syphilis was always present in the Old World but was not identified as a separate disease from leprosy before about A.D. 1500. A third possibility is that syphilis developed in both hemispheres from the related diseases bejel and yaws. New studies by paleopathologists Bruce and Christine Rothschild favor a New World origin.

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The article further states:

https://homeupgradespecialist.com/3z05hglsww . . . they examined 687 skeletons from archaeological sites in the United States and Ecuador ranging in age from 400 to 6,000 years. Populations to the south (New Mexico, Florida, and Ecuador) proved to have syphilis, while those to the north (Ohio, Illinois, and Virginia) had yaws. By contrast, examination of 1,000 Old World skeletons dated to before contact with the New World revealed no cases of syphilis. This suggests that syphilis was first present in the New World and was later brought to the Old World. Furthermore, the Rothschilds found that the earliest yaws cases in the New World collections were at least 6,000 years old, while the first syphilis cases were at least 800 years old and perhaps more than 1,600 years old. This suggests that syphilis may be a New World mutation of yaws, which has a worldwide distribution. The occurrence of the same mutation giving rise to syphilis independently in the New and Old worlds seems unlikely.

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Alprazolam Online Overnight When I was younger, I was taught that both smallpox and syphilis were of Old World origin. In fact, both diseases were used as examples of how the incoming invaders brought corruption and deliberate germ warfare to the New World. It appears that what I was told may have been only half right. There is undoubted evidence in history of the accidental killing of Native Americans by way of encounter with Old World peoples. One such example comes from the South American Missionary Society, now called the Society of Anglican Missionaries and Senders. Their history records an entire tribe on the tip of South America wiped out as a result of missionary activity! Sadly, the missionaries brought with them a disease to which they were mostly immune but to which the tribal people had no resistance. I served with that missionary society in the 1990’s, the memory of which I am proud. But, it was from them that I learned that bit of their own history.

https://www.clawscustomboxes.com/3xign5rop But, in the USA there is also a history of the deliberate taking of blankets corrupted with smallpox to Native American tribes in order to conduct a primitive form of biological warfare. For instance in 1763 Lord Amherst writes to one of his generals approving a plan to “extirpate that execrable race” by giving them tainted blankets. Some had thought that syphilis was also one of the Old World “gifts” to the New World. Remember that it was considered to be an Old World disease by the very Europeans themselves.

https://polyploid.net/blog/?p=2507v40wh But, the study quoted above is one of several studies that point out that Native Americans may have harbored a disease to which the Old World conquistadors and illegal immigrants were completely susceptible. If this theory of the origin of syphilis is true, then the New World and the Old World traded diseases. Smallpox came here from the Old World while syphilis went to the Old World from here. There is a certain symmetry in that. And, it might mean that both smallpox and syphilis were unintended consequences of the meeting of two cultures that had been totally separated for centuries. That type of history continues on to this day. Diseases such as HIV and Ebola virus both seem to have originated on another continent, but been brought to the USA by travelers. Such is one of the unintended consequences of globalization.

https://foster2forever.com/2024/08/cza0g5su2.html There are, of course, many who argue that syphilis is an Old World disease, and there are some rather good arguments for that as well. Syphilis well points out the problems of trying to track down the origins of a disease. The outward symptoms of syphilis, particularly in the third stage, overlap some of the ancient descriptions of leprosy. On the other hand, yaws is caused by an organism in the same genus as syphilis and is found in the warm areas of the New World as well as Africa. You can see how the argument can go back and forth as to whether this is a New Word mutation or an Old World mutation or a dual mutation.

Xanax Rx Online This points out some of the difficulties that face scientists as they try to explain the origins of disease and even the origins of the Earth and of the solar system, etc. On the other hand, the study also gives indirect evidence to the continuing development that is found within science and the clashes that help scientists to develop the best explanations of observed reality. Because of the unknowns in a disease as well known as syphilis, the wrong approach would be to focus only on the unknowns in order to claim that any theory of the beginnings of syphilis is automatically false and that an alternate untested theory must be taught alongside the studied theories.