68 ANTIQUITIES IN TENNESSEE. 



quency of the contagion before that period gave color to a report, perhaps at first 

 maliciously propagated by some who envied the success of Columbus, that this 

 disease was one of the fruits of his celebrated enterprise." 



Edwards^ enters no further into the discussion than to refer to the dissertations 

 of William Beckett (Phil. Trans., vol. xxvii, p. 365 ; vol. xxxi, p. 47), and to that 

 of Antonio Riberio Sanchez, published at Paris, 1772 and 1774; to the authorities 

 referred to by Mr. Foster in his " Observations made during a Voyage round the 

 World," p. 492 ; and to the following quotation : " In ' Stow's Survey of London' 

 (vol. ii, p. 7) is preserved a copy of the rules or regulations established by Parlia- 

 ment in the eighth year of Henry the Second for the government of licensed 

 stews in Southwark, among which I find the following : ' No stewholder to keep 

 any woman that hath the perilous infirmity of burning.' " This was 330 years 

 before the voyage of Columbus. After a careful examination of the original 

 papers of Mr. William Beckett,' published in the Philosophical Transactions, I 

 have failed to discover any clear evidence of the existence of syphilis before the 

 discovery of America by Columbus. 



Clavigero concludes his " History of Mexico"^ with a dissertation on the origin 

 of the French Evil, in which he in like manner quotes the dissertations of William 

 Beckett and of Sanchez, and endeavors to refute the almost universal opinion that 

 the French Evil had its origin in America. Neither Edwards nor Clavigero 

 adduces one single fiict or original observation to sustain this position. 



On the other hand, Oviedo, one of the earliest writers who makes mention of 

 this disease, and who also enjoyed opportunities of direct observation, says: "The 

 venereal disease was certainly introduced into Europe from these islands" (the 

 West Indies), " where the best medicine for the cure of it, the guaiacum, is also 

 found. * * * * I ^vas acquainted with many persons who accompanied 

 Columbus in his first and second voyages, and suffered of this disease ; one of 

 whom was Pedro Margaritte, a man much respected of the king and queen. In 

 the year 1496 it began to spread in Europe, and the physicians were wholly at a 

 loss in what manner to treat it. When, after this, Gonzales Fernandez de Cordova 

 was sent with an army by his Catholic Majesty on behalf of Ferdinand the Second, 

 King of Naples, some infected persons accompanied that army, and, by intercourse 

 with the women, spread the disease among the Italians and French, both which 

 nations had successively the honor of giving it a name ; but in truth it came 

 originally from Hispaniola, where it was very common, as was likewise the 

 remedy." 



Sir Hans Sloane, M.D., in his great work on the "Natural History of Dis- 

 eases, etc., of Jamaica and other West India Islands," says, " Columbus likewise 

 brought into Europe in his ship, and first voyage from these places, the pox, wliich 

 spread so quickly all over Europe that Antonius Benivenius, who was at that 

 time a great and fixmous practitioner of physic at Florence, in the first chapter of 



' Vol. \, pp. 64-66. 



' Phil. Trans. 1718, vol. xxx, p. 839 ; 1'720, vol. .xxxi, p. 47 ; 1720, vol. x.xxi, p. 108. 



" Vol. iii, pp. 415-435. 



