III. ORIGIN AND FIRST FORMS OF THE SYPHILITIC CHANCRE OR CHANCRE-SYPHILIS.
Secale 161.- American Origin.
Although we cannot consider the so-called epidemic syphilis of the last years of the 15th century as a venereal disease in itself, nevertheless we have to view it is the fountain-head of our modern syphilis. In this respect, whatever has reference to the originating causes and the phenomenal forms of that epidemic, must be as valuable to us at the ulterior history of syphilis itself. Unfortunately, however, the writers of that period differ concerning the true causes of that epidemic so much, that nothing remarks for us to do except to present all their conflicting opinions, and afterwards to subject them to a critical examination, with a view of determining their relative degree of correctness and credibility. Among these opinions, the most important is the one which traces the epidemic to the discovery of the American continent. According to this view, which was first started by the Spaniard Oviedo, and afterwards repeated by Schmaus, Crato, Fernelius, Lowe, Friend, Hoffmann, Astruc, Robertson, Van Swieten and Girtanner, Christopher Columbus, on his return from his first voyage, on the 13th of January, 1493, is said to have brought this disease to Europe by this disease to Europe by his crew, who were affected with it; it is stated that the ship on board of which he was brought home as a prisoner, after several voyages to America numbered two hundred syphilitic patients among her crew. It is not certain, however, whether the germs of this disease had not already been planted before the crew shipped on their voyage, though Branavola, Roderick Diaz, Fallopius and other authors of that period, inform us that the disease had been hitherto unknown in Europe, and, according to the uniform testimony of every one who visited St. Domingo shortly after the discovery of that island, had been indigenous among the natives long before this event happened. This is likewise Oviedo’s opinion, whereas Astruc, who likewise advocates the American origin of syphilis, asserts that the disease arose from an acridity of the menstrual blood, caused by a mixture of the heated blood of Souther Italy and Southern America, out of which the syphilitic virus was born. Girtanner, who likewise believes in the story of the American origin of syphilis, has another hypothesis concerning this origin. According to this opinion, the chancre-virus has emanated from ulcers caused by certain insects in South America, known by the name of “Tschiken” (pulex penetrans). The extremely voluptuous American women, in order to excite in their naturally cold husbands a desire for sexual intercourse, are said to have given them all sorts of simulating beverages; and, while their husbands were asleep, to have placed upon their penis certain poisonous insects acting like Cantharides, by whose irritating action the organ swelled up and caused an irresistible desire for coition. The wound caused by such a sting is said to have in many cases become converted into a malignant ulcer, with a lardaceous base, and hard, callus edge, resembling our modern chancres; the purulent matter running out of the male urethra, is supposed to have been transmitted into the vagina, where it caused chancre, that henceforth perpetuated itself as an idiopathic, self-existing disease.
Whether this hypothesis is well founded or not, Oviedo, who is the real author of the colonization theory of syphilis, asserts most positively that the desolating plague of syphilis was transferred from the West Indian islands to Spain, whence the Spanish armies carried it to Italy in 1495. From the countries it was carried further, to Naples and France, by the Italian women, who had become infected by the French and Spanish soldiers; and finally, it was spread over the whole of Europe by the German and Dutch troops who, during the war between Francis I, and Charles V., served in the army of the latter.
Secale 162. The so-called Maranian origin of Syphilis.
However evident the truth of Oviedo’s proposition may seem to be, and however willing European Courts may have been to transfer the responsibility of this whole plague from their own shoulders to those of the poor aborigines of America, nothing is less founded in historical truth than these very assertions promulgated by Oviedo. For, not to mention the fact that up to the year 1518 (twenty-six years after the appearance of the epidemic), in spite of every exertion to discover the first origin of this malady, nobody before Oviedo had imagined to derive it from the discovery of America; which, if this new disease had been brought over from America by the crews of Columbus, would have created as much excitement as the discovery of America itself: all the documents of that period show, in a clear and unmistakable manner, that this epidemic already raged in Naples in 1494. or, perhaps, even in 1492, previous to Columbus’ first voyage of discovery; yet the Spanish soldiers did not reach Naples till 1495. John Nauclerus, who died in 1500, and hence must have been a contemporary witness of that dreadful epidemic, states that, of the 400,000 Jews, who in 1492 had been driven out of Spain, under the name of the Mariani a large number, abandoned to misery and want, came to Italy, where Pope Alexander VI. permitted them to settle before the gates of Rome, and where upwards of 30,000 of their number perished of the epidemic that prevailed among them. This plague, which, according to some authors, seems to have been a pestilential, petechial typhus, attended with the breaking out of large pustules resembling those of small-pox, soon spread, not only in Rome (in consequence of the Mariani entering the city in secret), but, as John Salicet, of Tubingen, informs us, travelled, in 1497 to 1500, almost through every country in Europe. Considering that an act of Parliament was issued in Paris, in 1496, where mention is made of a large pox (grosse verole), that had already prevailed for two years; considering further the report of an Oldenburg monk, who states that this plague had spread over Westphalia, in the year 1494; and the testimony of Fulgas, who states that this plague had already been known two years before the arrival of Charles VIII., in the year 1492; and, finally, considering that Elias Capreolus speaks of the general spread of this plague, as having taken place in the years 1493 and 1494, it is evident that Oviedo’s assertions are utterly unfounded. However, taking it for granted that this plague was brought by the Mariani to Italy, whence it spread over the whole of Europe, it is not by any means certain that it was of a syphilitic nature, and, if it was not, that the syphilitic disease was after all, brought to Europe by the Spanish crews of Columbus. Indeed, this is not impossible; only, if this thing had taken place in the manner in which Oviedo relates it, it would seem strange that the colonization of this plague from American to Europe, should have remained unnoticed until 1496, even by Oviedo, who, however, was in Barcelona at the same time that Columbus happened to be there. It is only in the year 1496 that mention was first made of the syphilitic disease of the Spanish crews who had returned from America. Hence, the first reliable testimony that we possess of the modern syphilis, is the passage quoted in Section 160, from Fernelius, where chancres are spoken of as something distinct from the great French plague; from which we infer that the phenomena of modern syphilis were first observed subsequent to the time when that epidemic was raging.
Secale 163. Probable causes of the Syphilitic Chancre, or Chancre-Syphilis.
Not satisfied with either the American or Maranian tradition concerning the origin of syphilis, some undertook to trace this disease to the influence of planets and stars; some to a suspicion that the Spaniards had eaten human flesh; some, again and this tradition is deserving of some notice to a prostitute who is said to have lived among the leprous women, and whose private parts had been affected with a malignant ulcer, of a peculiar kind, the virus from which first attacked the males, who transmitted it to their women, after which the disease spread more and more, as is the case even now. This mode of explanation is, indeed, very simple, and would be perfectly acceptable if we could only show in what manner this leprous ulcer first attained the power of producing in other individuals a disease of an entirely different character.
The opinion that the modern syphilis is derived from the ancient lepra, is not, by any means, uncommon. Vendelin, Bichat, and Lichtendberg, and many other physicians have entertained this opinion, not without cause; for though in defence of this opinion we have to assume that the character of the ancient lepra had to become totally changed, in order that this plague might take the form of the modern syphilitic disease; yet, on the other hand, we should not overlook the circumstances, that among the symptoms of the famous syphilitic epidemic of the fifteenth century, there were many symptoms of the former lepra and elephantiasis, which diseases were well known to the physicians of that age; and that the lepra, to whose symptoms some of our syphilidae bear some resemblance, disappeared from Europe when that epidemic, some of whose symptoms call to mind some of our syphilidae, even as, at its first appearance, they may have called to mind some of the pathognomonic features of lepra, disappeared from the European continent. This disappearance of the lepra was so sudden, that the 21,000 lepra-houses which had been erected outside the gates of cities in France, a country of much smaller extent at that time than at the present, were closed in the year 1526, scarcely thirty years after the chancre-syphilis had developed itself into an independent disease, with fixed pathognomonic forms. The same thing was done on the west coast of Italy, in some parts of Spain, as well as in England and Scotland. The fact that some lepra-cases still occur, and that both diseases exist simultaneously in some parts of the world, is no argument against the supposed metamorphosis of lepra; nor does it argue against the fact that yonder famous epidemic, which was neither lepra nor syphilis, not a pure form of typhus, but had some of the features of all these three plagues, may have constituted the process of transformation, by means of which, out of the struggle of the most diversified pathological elements (former venereal phenomena, lepra, and recent typhus), a new idiopathic disease, combining the hitherto scattered venereal phenomena in one unit, developed itself, and took the place of an old, more or less exhausted, morbid process. Adding to this, the external circumstances favorable to the production of a pathological event as great as it was incredible such, for instance, as the meeting of large hosts, from every country, encamped for a long time in a climate to which they were unused, and sustained by unwholesome and unwonted supplies of nourishment; considering, moreover, the atmospheric influences, the noxious emanations from thousands of cadavers, excesses and licentiousness of every kind; and, finally, the wild passions let loose by the war, the non-advent of such a plague as the modern syphilis would have seemed a source of astonishment, rather than that its advent should excite our wonder.
