40 pages • 1 hour read
Alfred W. CrosbyThe Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1972A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “The Early History of Syphilis: A Reappraisal”
Early modern Europeans were the first in Europe to know venereal syphilis, which was likely brought to Europe from the Americas. Contemporaries claimed the Columbus’s voyages transported the disease to Europe, and Arawak mythology contains references to the illness, which suggests it had a long history in the Americas. This evidence supports the Columbian theory of syphilis’s origins in the Americas. Scholars, however, have put forth competing theories on its origins.
The Unitarian theory, for example, holds that venereal syphilis is “merely a syndrome of a disease which has always been worldwide,” though its symptoms vary (141). Venereal syphilis is the same illness as the disease called yaws, bejel, pinta, or irkinja in other parts of the world. The Unitarian school holds that all these maladies are manifestations of tremonematosis, which exhibits different symptoms depending on climate and cultural distinctions. The disease first appeared in sub-Saharan Africa as yaws, which impacts the surface layers of skin due to the climate. As humans dispersed throughout the world, they took the disease with them, and it changed. In dry regions, it manifested as bejel, an illness that mainly affects children in regions of Southwestern Asia. As hygiene progressed, the disease “retreated even deeper into the human body, into the bones and arteries and nervous system” (143), where it eventually manifested as a sexually transmitted infection. Science supports close links between these diseases but does not confirm the Unitarian perspective.
Whatever its origins, venereal syphilis noticeably impacted early modern Europe. Evidence not only indicates connections between the Columbian voyages and the disease’s arrival in Europe but also links European syphilis epidemics with warfare. For instance, when the French invaded Italy in the late 1400s, they pillaged the countryside and raped women during their advance and retreat. Shortly thereafter, an epidemic of the illness flared up in the Italian lands that were victimized by the French and contributed to its spread across the Continent.
Primary sources record the symptoms of the disease and its decreasing virulence with the advance of time, as well as attempts to treat it: “If one wished to create a disease to encourage the proliferation of quacks and quack remedies, one could do no better than syphilis […]” (152-53). Mercury proved a successful treatment for the disease, but its adverse effects ultimately led patients to their deaths. Other ineffective remedies circulated, with medical practitioners making hefty profits from those who sought treatment in vain.
Though humorists poked fun at syphilis, its arrival in Europe also served to create distrust and fear as it destroyed “the bonds of respect and trust that bound men and women together,” and “men began to limit the contacts with any who might conceivably have been touched by the pox” (158-59). Traditions of hospitality and bonds of trust between men and women soured because of fear of contracting the disease.
Chapter 4 Analysis
In his 2003 prologue, Alfred Crosby writes that his fourth chapter “has weathered the last thirty years the least successfully,” and
I should not have ennobled syphilis with a whole chapter as if it were Montezuma’s Revenge. Its Old World debut was spectacular and, like all things venereal, fascinating, but it was not a history-maker like the plague in the fourteenth century or smallpox in the sixteenth century. I cast it in a major role because I was uneasy about so many diseases crossing west over the Atlantic and none crossing east (xviii-xix).
Crosby’s emphasis on syphilis was an attempt at “balance,” but the disease was not as impactful as smallpox and other illnesses were in the Americas during the 1500s. Syphilis was deadly prior to the advent of penicillin, but it did not kill as many people as smallpox. It did not wipe out entire societies and deplete populations by at least 50%, if not more, as European diseases did in the Americas. He looked for “balance” where there was none. The Americas were simply more devastated by new illnesses than Europe ever was.
Nonetheless, syphilis made a notable impact on early modern European society, as Crosby shows. It did not sweep through the Continent unnoticed, as primary-source descriptions of symptoms and attempts at treatment show, and Crosby demonstrates that quackery profited by providing false hope and ineffective treatments.
At the conclusion of his chapter, Crosby asserts that syphilis’s arrival in Europe damaged social relations, as friends retreated from one another out of fear. Likewise, its appearance created new mistrust between men and women and damaged marital relations. He provides little evidence in support of these claims, but marriage laws attempted to regulate the spread of syphilis well into the 1900s. For instance, in the early 20th century, couples planning to wed in the United States had to undergo a blood test to prove they were not infected with syphilis, although couples often avoided taking them.
