Origin of Syphilis

Abstract

In an opening address on the above subject to the Osler Club, London, on April 22, 1958, Prof. J. F. D. Shrewsbury advanced the (to me) novel suggestion that syphilis in its present form, which undoubtedly caused great alarm to health authorities in Europe in the late 90s of the 15th century, was due to the mutation about 1493 of a treponeme which had hitherto caused a milder form of treponematosis, such as Sibbens in Scotland and, under many other names, in Scandinavia and elsewhere. Thus, as I understood him, he gave T. pallidum a pedigree less than 500 years old with as parent a milder pathogen which had inhabited the world since prehistoric times. The only other attempt at fixing a length of pedigree to T. pallidum which I have been able to trace was that of H. V. Williams (1932), who, at the end of a long article describing syphilitic changes in bones found in American graves of date not later than A.D. 1300, said: "Somewhere and at some time a non-pathogenic spiral organism acquired pathogenic properties and became Spirochaeta pallida. It seems likely that this event took place less than 10,000 years ago. An antiquity so slight as even 2,000 years would present no difficulty to modem bacteriologists...." Personally, I find great difficulty in accepting Prof. Shrewsbury's thesis for the following reasons: First, it seems to postulate the existence in the Old World before 1493 of a milder form of syphilis such as, he says, Sibbens and, I suppose, the Syphiloide of Jutland and the endemic syphilis of Bosnia Herzogovina and the Middle East of today. I have not been able to trace any reference to Sibbens earlier than the 17th century.

A new world of infectious disease

“…The infectious disease receiving the greatest attention from paleopathologists with respect to Old World versus New World origins has been venereal syphilis, caused by the spirochete Treponema pallidum, with the model examined most frequently being the so-called Columbian hypothesis (Harrison, 1959;Dennie, 1962;Crosby, 1969Crosby, ,1972. According to this model, syphilis began in the Americas and was unknown in Eurasia until after 1492.…”

Histological identification of syphilis in pre‐Columbian England

“…Generally, these hypotheses suggest that syphilis originated either in the New World (Crosby, 1969;Dennie, 1962;Goff, 1967;Harrison, 1959;Pusey, 1915Pusey, , 1933 or the Old World (Cockburn, 1961;Hackett, 1963Hackett, , 1967Holcomb, 1937), or was present in both regions but evolved to accommodate different geographical and sociological environments (Hudson, 1963(Hudson, , 1965a(Hudson, ,b, 1968, respectively. Each of these hypotheses has its merits, but only one should be the most consistent with the available data.…”

Two probable cases of treponemal disease of Medieval date from England

“…Much debate has centered on the relationship between treponemal disease in Europe and in the Americas, particularly with regard to venereal syphilis. The Columbian hypothesis maintains that venereal syphilis originated in the Americas and was unknown in Europe until it was brought back by Columbus and his men upon their return in 1493 from their first voyage of discovery to the New World (Williams et al, 1927; Harrison, 1959; Dennie, 1962; Goff, 1967; Crosby, 1969). Other theories hold that it was already present in Europe prior to this.…”