The Spread of Disease 1450-1750

An overview of diseases spread between the Old and New Worlds.

Source: http://faculty.humanities.uci.edu/bjbecker/PlaguesandPeople/lecture8.html

One example of a disease that is thought to have traveled to Europe from the Americas is syphilis. The following is the abstract from an analysis of a number of studies on the origins and history of the spread of the disease. 

For nearly 500 years, scholars have argued about the origin and antiquity of syphilis. Did Columbus bring the disease from the New World to the Old World? Or did syphilis exist in the Old World before 1493? Here, we evaluate all 54 published reports of pre-Columbian, Old World treponemal disease using a standardized, systematic approach. The certainty of diagnosis and dating of each case is considered, and novel information pertinent to the dating of these cases, including radiocarbon dates, is presented. Among the reports, we did not find a single case of Old World treponemal disease that has both a certain diagnosis and a secure pre-Columbian date. We also demonstrate that many of the reports use nonspecific indicators to diagnose treponemal disease, do not provide adequate information about the methods used to date specimens, and do not include high-quality photographs of the lesions of interest. Thus, despite an increasing number of published reports of pre-Columbian treponemal infection, it appears that solid evidence supporting an Old World origin for the disease remains absent.

Source: Harper, K. N., Zuckerman, M. K., Harper, M. L., Kingston, J. D. and Armelagos, G. J. (2011), The origin and antiquity of syphilis revisited: An Appraisal of Old World pre-Columbian evidence for treponemal infection. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol., 146: 99–133. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.21613/abstract

Though some diseases did travel from the New World to the Old, far more went the other way around. The following is an excerpt from a scholarly article on the Columbian exchange which discusses the extent of the destruction Old World diseases wreaked on Native American populations:

The list of infectious diseases that spread from the Old World to the New is
long; the major killers include smallpox, measles, whooping cough, chicken pox, bubonic plague, typhus, and malaria. Because native populations
had no previous contact with Old World diseases, they were immunologically
defenseless. Dobyns writes that “before the invasion of peoples of the
New World by pathogens that evolved among inhabitants of the Old World, Native Americans lived in a relatively disease-free environment. . . . Before Europeans initiated the Columbian Exchange of germs and viruses, the peoples of the Americas suffered no smallpox, no measles, no chickenpox, no inflfluenza, no typhus, no typhoid or parathyroid fever, no diphtheria, no cholera, no bubonic plague, no scarlet fever, no whooping cough, and no malaria.” 

Although we may never know the exact magnitudes of the depopulation, it is estimated that upwards of 80–95 percent of the Native American population was decimated within the first 100–150 years following 1492. Within 50 years following contact with Columbus and his crew, the native Taino population of the island of Hispanola, which had an estimated population between 60,000 and 8 million, was virtually extinct. Central Mexico’s population fell from just under 15 million in 1519 to approximately 1.5 million a century later. Historian and demographer Nobel David Cook estimates that, in the end, the regions least affected lost 80 percent of their populations; those most affected lost their full populations; and a typical society lost 90 percent of its population.

Source: Nunn, Nathan, and Nancy Qian. 2010. "The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24(2): 163-88.

http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.24.2.163

Here is a more detailed description of an epidemic that broke out in Mexico by Bernardino de Sahagún, a Spanish Franciscan friar who spent time in Mexico, or as it was called at the time, New Spain, along with his accompanying illustration:

. . . an epidemic broke out, a sickness of pustules. It began in Tepeilhuitl. Large bumps spread on people; some were entirely covered. . . .[The victims] could no longer walk about, but lay in their dwellings and sleeping places, . . . And when they made a motion, they called out loudly. The pustules that covered people caused great desolation; very many people died of them, and many just starved to death; starvation reigned, and no one took care of others any longer.

Source: http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nattrans/ntecoindian/essays/columbianb.htm, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, c. 1575-1580; ed., tr., James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest Mexico (Univ. of California Press, 1993)

One disease that had been around for quite a long time, and continued to affect people around the world in this time period was smallpox. Despite differences in cultures, many peoples from around the world attributed the smallpox disease to various gods and goddesses. Here are several depictions of gods and goddesses associated with smallpox from various places:

Smallpox god of the Western African Yorubas  Sopona.  

Hindu goddess of smallpox, Sitala Mata.

Chinese gods and goddess associated with smallpox.

Source: Fenner, et al. Smallpox and its Eradication. http://whqlibdoc.who.int/smallpox/9241561106_chp5.pdf

The following maps illustrate how smallpox was spread. The first focuses on Africa, the second on the Americas, from the Old World. 

Though the worst of the plague hit the world with the Black Death in 14th Century, the plague continued to be a problem in this time period. The above is a mortality bill listing those who died in London during a week ion the Great Plague of 1665.

Source: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/explore-online/pocket-histories/london-plagues-13481665/great-plague-1665/