# Giving thanks for diseases **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [November 23, 2001, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giving-thanks-for-diseases/94857 "2001-11-23T04:21:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2001, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giving-thanks-for-diseases/94857/1 "2001-11-23T04:21:22Z")
Nitpick time. In the column on the origin of Thanksgiving ( [http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2\_147.html](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_147.html) ), Cecil talks about the Pilgrims and local Indians getting together to “chow down, play volleyball, and exchange native diseases”. Unless they were engaging in activities[sup]1[/sup] that would allow them to exchange syphilis[sup]2[/sup], I think he meant “non-native diseases”. [sup]1[/sup] Probably not volleyball[sup]3[/sup] [sup]2[/sup] And even syphilis was not native to New England, although it was to other parts of the New World. [sup]3[/sup] I play volleyball often. Haven’t got syphilis from it yet. Maybe I’m not doing it right… ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2001, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giving-thanks-for-diseases/94857/2 "2001-11-23T06:45:55Z")
If Cecil was talking about syphilis, there is _some_ evidence that it _may_ have originated in the Old World. Possibly. Or possibly not. [http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0847511.html](http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0847511.html) > [@](#): > > syphilis , contagious sexually transmitted disease caused by the spirochete Treponema pallidum (described by Fritz Schaudinn and Erich Hoffmann in 1905). Although some medical historians believe that syphilis first appeared in Spain among sailors who had returned from the New World in 1493, others have concluded from archaeological evidence that syphilis probably originated in the Old World but may have been confused with leprosy. It was not widely recognized until an epidemic in Europe at the end of the 15th cent. There was a British archelogist who not long ago dug up a lot of skeletons of monks from a medieval (pre-1492) British graveyard, and found that many of them had typical syphilitic lesions on their skeletons. They _think_. [http://www.carlzimmer.com/articles\_2001\_7.html](http://www.carlzimmer.com/articles_2001_7.html) Possibly. Or maybe not. The controversy rages. Eh, IMO Cecil should have just said, “…exchange diseases”, period. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2001, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giving-thanks-for-diseases/94857/3 "2001-11-24T01:16:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Duck Duck Goose \* > If Cecil was talking about syphilis, there is _some_ evidence that it _may_ have originated in the Old World. Possibly. Or possibly not. Since he mentioned smallpox in the article, I don’t think he was talking about syphilis. But since we’re talking about this subject, we should link to this column: [Why did so many Native Americans die of European diseases but not vice versa?](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_100.html) > [@](#): > > There was a British archelogist who not long ago dug up a lot of skeletons of monks from a medieval (pre-1492) British graveyard, and found that many of them had typical syphilitic lesions on their skeletons. They _think_. According to Christopher Wills in _Yellow Fever, Black Goddess_, there’s even a Swedish skeleton from about 1000 years ago with signs of tertiary syphilis. But the fact that there was a major epidemic in Europe just after Columbus’s return at least means that he probably brought back an especially virulent version of the disease that Europeans had no previous exposure to. Also Asians, as Japan experienced a syphilis epidemic of similar intensity in 1512. Or perhaps not Columbus. About the same time, Portuguese explorers were sailing down the African coast. Could one of them have brought back a version of yaws (tropical skin disease that’s nearly an identical organism to syphilis) that had found a new method of transmission? Personally, I find the Columbus evidence more convincing, but I’m not a historical epidemologist. > [@](#): > > Eh, IMO Cecil should have just said, “…exchange diseases”, period. No doubt. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2001, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giving-thanks-for-diseases/94857/4 "2001-11-26T19:33:22Z")
“Exchange native diseases”… As in, I have a set of diseases native to me, you have a set of diseases native to you, and now we meet and get mutually counter-exposed. That’s how I read it. Now maybe that mutual exchange was less mutual and more one-sided, but that’s what I understood it to mean.