1495 Syphilis Outbreak: The Deadly Disease That Swept Across Europe | The Syphilis Enigma | Timeline

When Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic in 1492, he brought with him

disease

s that virtually affected the native Indian population. His revenge, according to history, was to return the scourge of

syphilis

to Europe. But now, a skeleton unearthed in an English monastery may finally set the record straight. This is the true story of

syphilis

. This story begins in Hull. When planners decided to build a new magistrate's court next to a multi-storey car park in the city centre, they gave the local archaeological unit the opportunity to first survey the site for ancient remains and artefacts. Working within a very limited time frame, the team worked day and night, unearthing what they suspected could be the remains of a medieval convent.

By the end of the dig, they had unearthed more than 240 skeletons and countless artifacts, information that painted a detailed picture of a bleak medieval world: a heady mix of religion and wealth, medicine and morality, sex and

disease

. You have a complete plan for a medieval monastery, something almost unheard of; It is an important piece of archaeological work. John Bugless is the project leader for what is known as the "Magistrates Court Site", responsible for recording every last detail of the excavation. We are fortunate with this site that the conservation conditions are excellent. We have survivors of coffins, fragments of textiles, leather objects; we have bodies that still have shoes and things like that.

So we have really good skeletons to look at. One particular skeleton was sent from the helmet site to rewrite history. Very soon after obtaining the skeletons, we began to see things that were quite unusual. And in particular, there were many infectious diseases there, including what we thought were classic cases of syphilis. And this one here, 1216, this 25 to 35 year old man, is a good example. In fact, he is the best example. Skeletons from the Hull site were sent to the University of Bradford for analysis. It is usually incredibly difficult to diagnose the cause of death so long after the event, as many diseases leave no trace in the bones.

But syphilis is one of the few exceptions. Charlotte Roberts is an expert in paleopathology, the archeology of disease. Can she be sure that skeleton number 1216 really had syphilis? There are a series of changes in the skeleton to recognize syphilis. If we focus on the skull, you can immediately see that something is wrong. Normally, if I get a skull that is not affected by the disease, you would expect to see a smooth surface on this part of the skull. But here you have a smallpox lesion; holes in the bone. It's something people call sicca carrying. It is characteristic of venereal syphilis.

We don't see it in any of the other syndromes. So I would say that that is characteristic of the disease. The other thing about this skull is that it has a hole in the palate, the connection between the nose and the mouth, and that is commonly seen in syphilis. We go down the skeleton, what we see again is bone formation and destruction. I think probably the most florid bone formation is found in the leg bones. This is a thigh bone. And you can see that bone has formed along its entire length. We also have some destructive injuries here and here.

We look at one of the bones in the lower leg. Again, you see the same type of changes that you see here, but you also get a lot of bone formation in the front of this lower leg bone, which people call the "saber shin" because it looks like a saber. Imagine the inflammation, the swelling of these limbs, the redness, the heat, the pain. In addition to skeleton 1216, the site contained two other classic cases of the disease and there were characteristic signs of syphilis in more than 60% of the bodies. But all of these people were buried within the sanctuary walls of a deeply religious community.

And syphilis is a venereal disease that is contracted through sexual relations. So what kind of religious community was this? The building belonged to a Christian order called the Augustinian Friars, and this set of cloisters, housing and church was the convent. It was one of the first to be established in England and, in 1539, the last to be destroyed. The brothers were not rich, like some other religious orders of the time; They were supposed to beg to earn a living. These friars were the social services of their time: they took care of the poor at that time. They were experts in medicine and cared for the sick, whether they were rich or poor.

Their good works and their religious calling made them beyond reproach. And, of course, they were famous. But the skeletons from the Hull convent demonstrated the presence of a sexually transmitted disease. What had gone so wickedly wrong between the brothers here? There was more evidence from the excavation that could not be easily explained. A dozen bodies were found with a wooden stick buried next to them, leading to the suspicion that these friars belonged to a flagellation sect. We have a series of rods that are quite short. They are about this long and still have the bark. And they are hazel, pretty and smooth.

And it has been suggested that they are actually whipping rods. Because at that time, when the plague was ravaging various parts of Europe, there was a fairly strong movement, especially on the continent, in favor of self-flagellation and hair shirts. And you suffer more in this life; therefore, the future life becomes better. The Augustinian brothers were experts in the afterlife. They made a lot of money from death. They sold candles and shrouds for the dead. They presided over funerals, held vigils and organized masses for the souls of the deceased, all paid for by the wealthy merchants and aristocratic classes to save their souls, buying their way to heaven through the industry of the friars.

This put the brothers in a position of power. If they would dispense with their vow of poverty as easily as they seem to have broken their vow of celibacy, they could make a fortune from the misfortune of others. This medieval testament of Hall shows that the system was certainly open to corruption. We have two surviving wills from this time period. And one of them even states that a sum of money will be reserved for each friar who attends mass at this person's funeral. Which is terribly susceptible to abuse, because you can simply load x number of friars;

You could take friars from each house in the area and bring them and increase your funds. The Augustinians were not a closed order of monks, removed from the temptations of the world in a life of quiet contemplation. The priory was deliberately located in the commercial heart of the time, wedged between the homes of wealthy merchants and the key side of the bustling harbour. One of the things is the trade that comes to Hull and is enriched by the trade in wine from Spain. The volume of wine imported is enormous: one and a half million liters a year is a staggeringly large amount of wine, much of which would be consumed locally.

So you would seem to think that there might well be a high degree of revelry. The site in Hull uncovered large collections of imported wine jugs, evidence that at least some of the revelry took place within the fiery walls. But this does not mean that they were necessarily dissolute. Medieval monks probably drank four times as much alcohol as people in England drink today, and the friars of Hull were no different. The whippings, if that's what they were, point more toward a form of medieval Christian devotion than toward sexual deviance. If they were corrupt, the evidence is nothing more than circumstantial.

What we are left with would be surprising bone evidence. How can we explain the presence of syphilis within the convent walls? Channel Four commissioned experts from the University of Bradford to make a computerized map plotting the site of each skeleton, overlaid on the outline of the convent. The Augustinian friars sold burial plots within their church; The closer to the altar, the closer to God, and therefore the more expensive the plot. The most prestigious plots were reserved for the senior friars and the rich merchants who paid for this privilege. The map shows exactly where the bones of skeleton 1216 were buried: in a prime spot near the altar.

So who was he? A rich nobleman? Or an esteemed member of the monastic community? We will never know. The siege of Hull cannot prove that syphilis was widespread among the friars, but it does show that it was widespread among the elite of this prosperous community at the time. So when was that moment? When did skeleton number 1216 die? Excavation evidence suggests that he died in the 13th century. But if this was true, it was electrifying information. History records that syphilis originated among Native American Indians and was contracted by Christopher Columbus' crew during his voyages to the New World.

Upon returning to the Old World, the new disease became a plague of epidemic proportions. First among the Spanish soldiers at the siege of Naples in

1495

before spreading mercilessly throughout Europe. If the siege of Hull could be dated before 1492, then the disease must have existed in the Old World before Columbus's voyage, and history would have to be rewritten. And to help them date the burials, Hull archaeologists had a great stroke of luck: the site's waterlogged conditions had preserved a remarkable number of wooden coffins, ideal and rare material for obtaining a reliable date. It is a very unusual find.

There are only ten sites that have generated significant quantities of flooded coffin boards nationwide over the past fifty years. So it's a very unusual find and this is by far the largest set. Ian Tires, from Sheffield's dendrochronology unit, brought more than 300 samples to his laboratory. The fundamental thing we were supposed to figure out was the dating of the coffins, to help classify the stratigraphy and establish a calendar for the burials. You can see that we have wide rings and narrow rings that effectively reflect the conditions under which the tree was growing; whether you had a good or bad summer, as far as growth is concerned.

And they act like a fingerprint through time: the pattern of narrow and wide rings is unique across several millennia. After recording the measurements for each sample, Ian entered all the information into a central database to find a match that would give him a definitive date. From our dating perspective, we can date the year of it and indeed the season of the year that the trees were cut down. And those of us have the age of the bark, so the year the trees were felled is between 1340 and 1360. The date from the dendrochronology laboratory places the coffins between 1340 and 1369.

This in itself is not especially surprising . All indications from the excavation (the pottery, the historical records) show a date of around the mid-14th century, and the dating of the wood is right in the middle. But of course this information from the site in Hull has sent shockwaves through the archaeological and historical worlds. Because it is assumed that syphilis had not existed in this country, or even in Europe, until Columbus brought the disease from America. 150 years after the 1216 skeleton was buried in the nave of an Augustinian convent on the northeast coast of England. Who can history blame for the scourge of syphilis?

In 1493, Christopher Columbus returned to Europe with news of a New World. History records that he also brought with him a new disease: syphilis. But now the discovery of skeletons with syphilis scars undermines this 500-year-old version of the story. Because these bodies were buried 150 years before Columbus set sail. So the question now is: who really transmitted syphilis to whom? To understand this, we must closely examine the reasons why people have always believed in this Columbus theory. In the closing years of the 15th century, an ambitious young scholar described a new disease spreading across Europe. In recent times I have seen a disease so cruel, so distressing, so frightening, that until now nothing so frightening, so terrible or so repugnant had ever been known on this earth.

Joseph Gruenpeck was an eyewitness to the agonies of the Spanish soldiers at the siege of Naples in

1495

. Some had become so disgusting. Left out in the open on the battlefield, they expected to die. Others moaned, cried and let out heart-rending screams because of the ulceration of their male organ. Gruenpeck's description is historically important: it is the first undisputed record of syphilis in the world. He accurately portrays the various stages of the disease as they are still understood today. The first stage of the disease actually only involves ulceration at the site of infection, for example, genital ulcers.

The swelling of the glans was followed by an abscess, from which putrid-smelling pus oozed for a whole month. The second stage, which occurs three to six months after infection, features a generalized rash. They experienced intense pain in the head and shoulders.bones, and soon boils appeared all over the body. It is the third phase where considerable ulceration occurs on the skin. The person wouldn't feel very good, I don't think, and they wouldn't look very good either. Their bone lesions can be fairly well related to skin ulcerations. Imagine a boil or a skin ulcer, and that goes back to these injuries to the skull.

Not very good. And I would think that if you have an active infectious lesion in your mouth, you're going to have someone who's going to have pretty terrible bad breath. If you can imagine this person with these bones inside his body, you would expect swelling, a lot of pain and heat as a result of the inflammation. The other thing that occurs in the third stage of syphilis is what they call "general paralysis of the insane." This was more than just another plague. It was a disease that caused those who suffered it not only pain, but also shame.

In the fervently religious Christian Europe of the time, this new disease represented the wrath of God, punishing the wicked for their immorality. As Gruenpeck describes the horror of the late 15th century, no one seemed to know where syphilis came from and, of course, no one was willing to accept the place of origin of this disease as their own. He calls it the French disease; The French called it Neapolitan disease; The Germans called it the Spanish itch. Then a Portuguese doctor, who had treated Columbus's crew for the illness, made the connection with his voyage to the New World.

Clearly, they had contracted the disease from unclean American Indian women and brought it back to Christian Europe. In the 500 years since American Indians were first blamed for transmitting the disease to Europe, scientists have searched for evidence to support this theory. George R. Melagos is absolutely convinced that Columbus's crew contracted the disease in America and brought it back to Europe. He has been analyzing skeletons for 30 years. He believes that the only place where there is convincing evidence of syphilis in bones before 1492 is in America. What I found is that there is all kinds of evidence of injuries in the New World before Columbus, and they continued after Columbus.

If you go to the Old World, you hardly find any evidence. I looked from Florida to Ohio, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River, and found an incredible number of cases of this syphilis-like lesion. George is convinced that the disease was widespread in the New World, not only because he found classic cases, but because he found signs of syphilis throughout the population. Now, what you would expect to find is not just the fact that it is found within an individual, as we find in many isolated cases, but that we find it within the population and within a region if these people are in social contact.

They are in sexual contact and therefore the disease should be widespread. For George, the complete skeleton alone would not be enough proof that syphilis was present in medieval England before 1492. If Charlotte wants to reverse 500 years of history, she needs more evidence. At the Hull site she found signs of the disease in more than half of the skeletons. But it is true that this is why Hull is so important. Syphilis has not been a fun distribution in medieval Europe, as it seems to be in the United States. But Charlotte thinks there's a good reason for that. Syphilis does not appear in the bones until the third stage of the disease, sometimes up to 50 years after the initial infection.

In medieval times, most people would have died of something else before then, leaving no signs of having had syphilis. Only a small proportion of people with syphilis will receive bone changes. They may die before that develops. They may have died from something like the Black Death or other conditions that were prevalent at the time, such as cholera or smallpox. Etcetra, etcetra. So a lot of things happened in the medieval period that predisposed people to die quite young, and in fact this person died before the age of 40. But we don't know what, but we know that this person has syphilis.

So it's actually difficult to know what the prevalence, the rate, of this disease really was in the late medieval period in England, because there are so many confounding factors. Charlotte would not expect to find the classic signs of syphilis in the general population at this time. This is what makes 1216 such a special find. She shows all the evidence of the disease. There has never been a clearer example in the Old World of a site dated before 1492. But supporters of the Columbus theory want more: they want quantity as well as quality. And they want a carbon date.

The debate really centers on this question: What is the evidence in the Old World before contact? Now there may be irrefutable evidence in Hull. If they find, for example, that it has a radiocarbon date that dates it before 1492, then I would have some explaining to do. Dendrochronology has given a precise date to the pile of coffins from the Hull site. But George wants more than that. He wants a date for 1216 that comes from the bones themselves. In the debate over who gave syphilis to whom, the date is crucial. And Charlotte knows that if her findings are to be taken seriously, she will need irrefutable proof that skeleton number 1216 predates Columbus: a carbon date.

She sends samples of the bones to the carbon dating laboratory in Oxford. And she waits. By calculating how much radioactive carbon remains in the bones, it is possible to determine when the individual died. If skeleton 1216 can be safely dated before 1492, Columbus's theory will be in tatters. When the carbon age of 1216 is converted to calendar time, even with a cautious margin of error, it can be definitively said that the young man with syphilis died between 1300 and 1420 AD. At least 70 years before Columbus set sail for America. Charlotte is invited to an international conference in Texas, where the world's leading experts in this field gather.

Armed with photographic evidence and a carbon date, Charlotte arranges a private meeting to confront George R. Melagos with Smithsonian Institution curator Don Ordner as an independent witness. Will this be the end of the Columbus theory? I have some very interesting photographs of the skeleton from England that I think might change your mind about the pre-Columbian origin. Do you think the facts are going to change my mind? I hope so. Now you're looking at this. This skeleton comes from a view in Hull; It is one of the three that has changes that I am sure you would consider classic.

Classic what? Oh. I see. And I would suggest that that is carris sicca. Palate piercing here. Destruction and formation of bone. 60% of adults have bone formation in their lower legs. I would say this is obviously a clear case of syphilis. And I really congratulate you, because this is pretty impressive. When you see something like this, the complete specimen, which is classic, I mean, any anatomist who has had any experience with syphilis in modern populations would recognize these lesions immediately. At first glance, Charlotte has achieved a significant victory in Texas. Her 1216 skeleton diagnosis has been accepted and agreed upon.

But among the thousands of pre-Columbian skeletons excavated so far in Britain, it remains an isolated case. Charlotte thinks this is because no one has been looking for syphilis in the Old World, because it wasn't supposed to be there. George still isn't convinced. Actually... I mean, how many skeletons have been excavated in England, would you guess? Oh, many thousands. More than fifty thousand, I would say. His point is that, even though he has examined fifty thousand skeletons... I am not saying that those fifty thousand skeletons have been systematically and scientifically examined by a person who knows what he is looking for.

I mean, this would be... I would probably be more accepting of this position if it weren't an issue that's been around since the late 1800s. Or even from the 16th century. I mean, this is such an important topic within the history of medicine, within the history of disease, within the history of the world, that it seems to me that all this evidence would already be there. For George, more classic cases of syphilis would have to be unearthed in the northeast of England and elsewhere before he would agree to abandon the Columbus theory. But in Don Ordner, Charlotte has found an ally.

Don has examined the evidence in both the Old World and the New World. He agrees with Charlotte that it would be difficult to find widespread evidence of syphilis in Europe. But most importantly, she would question most of George's New World evidence. Don believes there is only one indisputable way to diagnose syphilis in old bones. The best evidence of venereal syphilis will occur in the skeletons of children. Syphilis is only infectious in the early stages of the disease. If a woman becomes pregnant during this time, the teeth that form on the fetus will have a unique groove mark.

She will also see evidence of abnormal defects in the teeth and she will be able to see a horizontal groove running through the central incisor. And next to that, the second incisor has broken. So the enamel was clearly very defective in tooth formation, and this would have occurred right at the end of pregnancy or at the time of birth. Work in the New World cannot prove that the disease originated here in the Americas, and very little work has been done in Europe to conclusively reject Columbus's theory. The only way to verify the existence of syphilis in adults is to identify it in the skeletons of their children.

Only a handful of skeletons of children, with the telltale syphilitic groove in their teeth, dated before 1492, had been found, all of them in America. Indeed, Columbus' entire theory was based on four or five skeletons. And yet he stood, seemingly unwavering. That is, until another skeleton was found with the distinctive teeth that finally broke this distorted view of history. A skeleton found not in America or medieval Europe, but in a city that flourished 2,000 years before the skeleton's death in 1216. For 500 years, American Indians have been blamed for spreading syphilis to Europe. Then the discovery of skeletons from medieval Hull suggested we might have given it to them.

Now, discoveries from the ancient world may finally reveal the truth behind the riddle of syphilis. Maciej and Renata Henneberg excavated nearly 300 skeletons from an ancient Greek settlement in southern Italy. Metaponto was an active port of forty thousand inhabitants that flourished from the year 600 BC. As they scanned the bones for signs of disease, Matty found it hard to believe the evidence before his eyes. What I could see in the bones, in terms of physical signs of disease, didn't make much sense in terms of the patterns we normally expect in some ancient populations. And it took me two weeks to understand the idea that the signs correspond to only one disease, and this disease was syphilis.

He found many bones with the classic lesions and formations of syphilis. Then his wife, Renata, an expert in dentistry, found definitive proof. The skeleton of a child with telltale marks on its teeth. When I told him that he had two examples of the dental change that occurs in congenital syphilis, Maciej was very happy, because finally we had the picture of syphilis united. The Hennebergs knew that, if they were right, the presence of syphilis in Europe had nothing to do with Columbus. But if he had been in Europe since classical times, then they should also find evidence of the disease at his other archaeological site.

Ancient Roman remains in Pompeii. They began looking for evidence that other experts might have missed. Crucially, they expanded their search beyond what the bones alone could tell them. They read Latin texts and studied Roman medicine. They found evidence everywhere that convinced them that syphilis was widespread in the city. There are several sets of evidence from written sources, of the cultural functioning of the city, of the prostitute business, of the taverns, of the fact that it was a commercial center and a seaport. And the evidence we can see in the bones comes together to support the hypothesis of the presence of syphilis in classical antiquity Europe.

By looking at the broader social context of the disease, the Hennebergs have not only shown that the disease has existed in Europe for thousands of years, but they have also found the key to unlocking the riddle of syphilis. The question is no longer: "Who gave it to whom?" There is simply not enough bone evidence yet, on either side of the Atlantic, to definitively settle the argument. But if we add to the evidence from the bones an understanding of the way of life in these places, the true story of syphilis begins to reveal itself. Syphilis is a survivor, and to survive it has mutated to adapt to different climates and different societies.

He hasn't always been a killer. Epidemiological research shows that in rural societies around the world syphilis was present, but in a much milder form and was not sexually transmitted. Mary LucasPowell studies the evolution of the bacteria and how it has been transmitted among Indian communities in the New World. Well, in the pre-Columbian New World - in the southeastern United States - there were ample opportunities due to styles of clothing, styles of communal sharing, eating and drinking utensils, and places to sleep. In each generation there were abundant opportunities for these diseases to be transmitted without any sexual contact.

And therefore, they were much more common within populations, but without connection to sexual activity. What the syphilis bacteria needs to spread is skin-to-skin contact. In unsophisticated rural communities and in warm climates like pre-Columbian America, bacteria could easily pass from skin to skin. It caused an ugly skin disease that everyone contracted in childhood. It rarely developed into anything more serious. And all those who contracted it as children were vaccinated against the dangerous venereal form of the disease. So why does the bacteria sometimes mutate and become a sexually transmitted killer? If we look at the places where we now know syphilis existed in its

deadly

venereal form, will that help us understand it?

What unites Metaponto, Pompeii, Hull and Naples? A common denominator is that they were all ports. Well, ports are ports. People have always behaved badly in ports. It seems that Hamburg is a good example at the moment. Rotterdam, Amsterdam: they are all ports. They all have very large red zones. And if your all-male crew is locked on a ship, then you would expect a certain amount of recreational activity and a certain amount of sexual activity to occur. And there will always be prostitution. But it can't simply be promiscuity. The culture of some rural New World communities, for example, allows promiscuity before marriage.

The difference, as Hull archaeologists discovered, was how cosmopolitan these ports were. The wine came from Spain; The wood of the coffin dates back to the Baltic forests. Remains of precious metals from the Far East were found in the stones of the convent. Complex international trade was apparently an essential feature of life in medieval Hull. There will be people from the Baltic, who we have seen in the wood trade, and from Spain who will arrive with ceramics and wine. We will also have people from the Netherlands: Dutch, French, people who come from Poland. And because there is a high population turnover, diseases will appear.

There is another reason why bacteria had mutated at certain times in the Old World into this horrible sexually transmitted plague. Venereal syphilis is mainly a disease of cities, of advanced civilizations with advanced sanitary measures and medications. Civilization means civilization. Better hygiene, the use of clothing and less sharing of eating and drinking utensils mean that the less dangerous form of the bacteria cannot move. It must mutate to survive. The people buried within the walls of Hull Friary were the sophisticated urban elite of medieval society. Among those people, the mild form of the disease simply could not survive, so the syphilis bacteria sought out the warm, sensual parts of the body and waited.

The riddle of syphilis has finally been solved. The bacteria have been in human society for thousands of years. But like all bacteria, it doesn't stick to just one shape. As society has changed, it has also changed. Where climate and social customs permitted, it would thrive as a mild childhood skin disease. But when and where social change made it impossible, it has transformed into a terrifying sexually transmitted killer. But there is a final twist in the story. For the innocent American Indians tainted over the past 500 years by the accusation of having transmitted syphilis to the world, history had decreed an even crueler fate.

When the native Indians first encountered Columbus and his crew, they were nearly wiped out by the diseases carried by the Europeans. The Indians survived, barely. But with the loss of so many people, they also lost their immunity to syphilis. The cycle of protection granted to each generation by the existence of the non-venereal form of the disease has been broken. And when, in the following centuries, venereal syphilis arrived from the Old World, the result for Native American populations was as devastating as it had been for Europeans hundreds of years before.