Did Europeans bring syphilis to the New World, or did they catch it here and carry it back to Europe? The question, long debated, may finally be settled: Bruce Rothschild, a paleopathologist at the Arthritis Center of Northeast Ohio, has found convincing evidence that syphilis plagued the Americas long before the arrival of Columbus.
Some previous studies had suggested that syphilis existed in the pre-Columbian New World and that a careful examination of skeletal remains might resolve the question, since syphilis is known to scar and deform bones. But researchers could not distinguish syphilis-ravaged bones from bones attacked by two related nonvenereal diseases, yaws and bejel. All three diseases are caused by bacteria of the genus Treponema.
Rothschild studied the skeletons of people who died during the last few hundred years and who are known to have suffered from either yaws, bejel, or syphilis. (Having one of the diseases confers ...
