20 ADAPTATION AND DISEASE 



was first recorded, and when it did appear it was an endemic, 

 and not a violently epidemic, disorder. 



Two diseases in this connexion inevitably come to mind — 

 diseases so characteristic in their manifestations and natural 

 histories, that had they presented themselves in Europe in the 

 Greek and Roman eras, they could not have escaped the notice 

 of the Aristotles and Plinys, let alone the purely medieal writers. 

 I refer to Syphilis and Cholera. 



Regarding Syphilis the problem is difficult to solve, nor can 

 it be said that an agreement has been reached as to the date of 

 its first appearance. This would, however, appear to stand out 

 clearly — (1) that not a trace of the disease was found in 10,000 

 skeletons examined by Elliot Smith x from burial-grounds of 

 ancient Egyptians ; (2) that as pointed out by Dr. Norman Moore 

 in the course of the discussion at the Royal Society of Medicine 

 in 1912, Galen with his keen observation and excellent descrip- 

 tion of the nervous conditions known to him is absolutely silent 

 as to the eminently characteristic symptoms of locomotor ataxy 

 and general paralysis of the insane. There could be no more 

 authoritative evidence that the disease as we know it did not 

 exist in ancient Rome. Syphilis, therefore, originated or reached 

 Europe at some later period. The discussion now centres as 

 to when that was, and there are the two parties, the one favour- 

 ing the American origin, through the returned sailors of Columbus, 

 ' the other denying this, and taking a generally agnostic position. 

 Opposed to the American theory is that excellent anthropologist 

 Dr. Hrdlicka of Washington, who in his extensive studies of 

 hundreds of pre-Columbian human remains has not come across 

 a trace of syphilis, while post-Columbian bones show that the 

 disease wrought fearful havoc among the American Indians ; 

 and now comes Sudhoff 2 with strong documentary evidence 

 from civic ordinances in Germany in 1495 — the year of the fall 

 of Naples — in favour of the view that the disease was already 

 well known and causing alarm in Germany at a time when it 

 was just being recognized in Italy. 



It would be out of place here to enter deeply into the value 

 of these respective contentions and to discuss whether Haiti or 



1 Vide Sir H. Morris, "Discussion on Syphilis," Proc. R. Soc. Med. S., 1912. 

 See also Elliot Smith, Lancet, 1908, ii. 521, and 1909, ii. 1596. 



2 Oraphische und typographische Erstlinge der syphilitische Litteratur, Munich, 

 1912. See also his Aus der Friihgeschichte der Syphilis, Leipzig, A. Barth, 1912. 



