From akriman@darwin.helios.nd.edu Wed Aug 1 08:17:56 2001 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.04) with ESMTP id f71FHs043948 for ; Wed, 1 Aug 2001 08:17:54 -0700 Received: from mailspool.helios.nd.edu (mailspool.helios.nd.edu [129.74.250.7]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.04) with ESMTP id f71FHsF18227 for ; Wed, 1 Aug 2001 08:17:54 -0700 Received: from darwin.helios.nd.edu (darwin.helios.nd.edu [129.74.250.114]) by mailspool.helios.nd.edu (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id KAA08121 for ; Wed, 1 Aug 2001 10:17:52 -0500 (EST) Received: (from akriman@localhost) by darwin.helios.nd.edu (8.10.1/8.10.1/ND-cluster) id f71FHqG06945 for classics@u.washington.edu; Wed, 1 Aug 2001 10:17:52 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 10:17:52 -0500 (EST) From: Alfred M Kriman Message-Id: <200108011517.f71FHqG06945@darwin.helios.nd.edu> To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Syphilis in the ancient world Status: O X-Status: Sally Winchester: > I was wondering if anyone had seen last night's installment of > Secrets of the Dead on PBS concerning the origins of syphilis. It > raised an interesting question concerning whether or not syphilis of > the more virulent sort had been present in the old world before > Columbus. By re-examining skeletons from Pompeii and other Classical > sites, they claimed that the bone lesions associated with tertiary > syphilis were present. My question for the list is, is there any > written, medical evidence which supports this claim? I don't recall > any and there was none given in the program which makes me very > suspicious of the claim that the bone lession were syphilitic. One > would think that such a virulent, unpleasant disease would have > attracted the notice of ancient physicians. Could such lesions be > caused by other diseases? I did not see the program, and I have not followed the topic in the year since our thread on it. As I pointed out then, syphilis is only one form of treponemal infection, and the question of how different these are, and why, is a difficult knot of questions. It is certain that treponema virus has been present in human populations around the world for many thousands of years, certainly including Europe. So far as I am aware, it is still difficult to say with certainty whether a particular bone lesion was caused by tert. syphilis or, say, yaws (nonsexually-transmitted variety). Human perversity being what it is, however, it seems not unreasonable that syphilis has been created from (widespread) yaws on a few independent occasions. In last year's thread, Michael Hendry passed along news of evidence that some monks had the infection in the 1340's. Yes, at least one other disease (I've forgotten which; possibly a severe nutritional deficiency) can cause bone lesions that shouldn't be but have been mistaken for syphilis. I hope I've caught all the substantive relevant earlier postings in the list below (chronologically ordered). Mind the wraps. http://140.254.248.46/hyper-lists/classics-l/listserve_archives/log95/9508c/9508c.35.html http://140.254.248.46/hyper-lists/classics-l/listserve_archives/log97/9705d/9705d.171.html http://140.254.248.46/hyper-lists/classics-l/00-08-01/0014.html http://140.254.248.46/hyper-lists/classics-l/00-08-01/0016.html http://140.254.248.46/hyper-lists/classics-l/00-08-01/0017.html http://140.254.248.46/hyper-lists/classics-l/00-08-01/0029.html http://140.254.248.46/hyper-lists/classics-l/00-08-01/0104.html http://140.254.248.46/hyper-lists/classics-l/00-08-01/0108.html MH: http://140.254.248.46/hyper-lists/classics-l/00-08-01/0581.html http://140.254.248.46/hyper-lists/classics-l/00-08-01/0597.html AMK: http://140.254.248.46/hyper-lists/classics-l/00-08-01/0602.html AMK .