EUROPEAN DISEASES AMONG AMER.-INDIANS.   Term Paper ID:26840 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Examines spread of diseases after Columbus (focusing on effects of smallpox), Pre-Columbian Indian health & medicine, diseases in Europe (focusing on the plague).... More...

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Paper Abstract: Examines spread of diseases after Columbus (focusing on effects of smallpox), Pre-Columbian Indian health & medicine, diseases in Europe (focusing on the plague). Paper Introduction: INTRODUCTION The 500th anniversary of the first voyage of Columbus to the New World came in 1992, and this event was an occasion for celebration in both Europe and the Americas. It was also the occasion for much bitterness and anger by revisionists who wanted to downgrade the achievement of Columbus because of a perception that his discovery of America in the long run caused more harm than good. One thing that is wrong with the revisionist view is that it holds Columbus personally responsible for all that followed his exploratory journey. In truth, the "discovery" of America was inevitable, and the subsequent events derived from the character of European culture at the time and from the personalities of the various participants, notably the Conquistadors who saw this as the occasion for looting more than Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. There was also arelatively benign nonvenereal (meaning not sexually transmitted) treponemalinfection that was related to syphilis. As soon as the ships were unloaded, sickness broke out among thecrew and quickly spread to the natives: Within a few days, the Admiral's surgeon reported, a third of the Spaniards had fallen ill, while natives everywhere were dead. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.Viola, Herman J. In Europe, it would become a major disease in thesixteenth century and would remain so until the eighteenth century,accounting for some 1 to 15 percent of all deaths in some of the westernEuropean nations. These may or may not have been found among thepopulation before Columbus. After Columbus,these and other diseases would spread in the New World. The people of the New World had come to the region over the BeringStrait thousands of years before--precisely when this occurred is still indispute. "Native American Medicine: Traditional Healing." Journal of the American Medical Association 265(17)(1981), 2271-2273.Crosby, Alfred W. Thevirus incubated in the Antilles after the arrival of the Europeans.Smallpox had been a common affliction in the densely populated regions ofEurope in the Middle Ages; however, it was not commonly a killer in thatsetting. Since they did notdomesticate animals, they also did not catch diseases from those animals,such as measles, which may have originated from canine distemper, orsmallpox, which is closely related to cowpox. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991. Theextended period of time they spent in the cold regions of the north meantthat only the hardy would survive such harsh conditions, and in additionthe climate served as a "cold filter" to lock up harmful germs and diseasesin the icy environment. The death rate is high,killing up to one-quarter, one-half, or more. The disease crossedfrom Cuba to Mexico, where it exterminated a large percentage of the Aztecsand so cleared a path for the intruders to the heart of the Aztec Empire.It then moved ahead of the Conquistadores and appeared in Peru, killingmany subjects of the Inca as well as the Inca himself and the successor hehad chosen (Crosby 2 ). The disease thenraged through New England and on to St. Alfred W. Crosby agreesthat the disease came to EspaZola in 1518 and then for the next fourcenturies played a major role in the advance of white imperialism. They came in small groups and spent a great deal of time in thefrigid zones before moving south to occupy most of the land area. But many of those men returned to the ships, having come down with the mysterious illness along the way (Stannard 68).Historians ever since have speculated about what illness this was. The most recent view is that the disease was influenzacarried by Canary Island pigs, or swine flu. Seeds of Change. Historiansnote that the absence of this sort of devastation was one of theexplanations for the remarkable population growth of medieval Europe. Recent research suggests that there was somesort of "tuberculosis-like pathology" in the population before 1492, thoughit was of a type not associated with pulmonary disease. and Carolyn Margolis. In 1738, smallpox destroyed half theCherokee; in 1759, half the Catawbas; in the nineteenth century, two-thirdsof the Omahas and perhaps half the population between the Missouri Riverand New Mexico; in 1837-1838, nearly every one of the Mandans and perhapshalf the people of the high plains. Native Americans visited a healer for severalpurposes--spiritual growth, "drying-out" from heavy drinking, myths toexplain their problem, and prescribed tasks or procedures to affect healing(Hodge). In truth, the "discovery" of America wasinevitable, and the subsequent events derived from the character ofEuropean culture at the time and from the personalities of the variousparticipants, notably the Conquistadors who saw this as the occasion forlooting more than discovery. thegreat plague originated in Central Asia, and it is believed that it wasfirst spread by the Mongols as they expanded across Asia and also byecological changes causing Central Asian rodents to move westward, takingthe fleas and the disease with them. There were then regular recurrencesduring the remainder of the fourteenth century and through all of thefifteenth century. Knopf, 199 .Stannard, David E. Eastern Europe and Russia werenext on the list in 1351, but the countries of eastern Europe were notaffected as greatly as those of western and central Europe. Somehistorians have noted that there is a tragic irony in the fact that thegreatest threat to the health of the Native Americans in the New World wasthe fact that they had such extraordinary good health when the Europeanexplorers arrived: For in the tens of thousands of years of isolation from the rest of the earth's human populations, the indigenous peoples of the Americas were spared from contact with the cataclysms of disease that had wreaked such havoc on the Old World, from China to the Middle east, from the provinces of ancient Rome to the alleyways of medieval Paris (Stannard 53). In addition, there was an apparently limited range of potentiallyserious diseases among the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Spielvogel. Itravaged the British isles in 1349, and by the end of that year, it hadreached northern Europe and Scandinavia. However, there were ill effects because ofthe discovery of the New World by Columbus, and one such effect has becomeknown as the Columbian Exchange, the exchange of diseases between theNative Americans and the Europeans, an exchange in which the NativeAmericans got the worst of it. CONCLUSION The Europeans who discovered and explored the New World broughtdiseases with them to which they were largely immune, or if they did getthese diseases, they survived them. Thediffusion of the plague usually followed commercial trade routes. The smallpox left no more than 1, peoplealive on EspaZola (Viola and Margolis 79). Ecological Imperialism. DISEASES IN EUROPE The European population was much more dense in the urban regions ofthe Old World and had suffered from many diseases. Episodes of theplague still did not end in Europe until the beginning of the eighteenthcentury when a new species of brown rat started replacing the black rat(Duiker and Spielvogel 489-49 ). Smallpox is cited by Crosby as one of the pathogens brought by theEuropeans which can be tracked to show the devastation it caused. Smallpox was the most powerful ally of the Conquistadores whofollowed Columbus, for it killed huge number of the native population. It then spread tosouthern Italy and southern France and Spain by the end of that year. He further notes that among thediseases the indigenous peoples did have were pinta, yaws, hepatitis,encephalitis, polio, and intestinal parasites (Crosby 197). The Conquest of Paradise. The disease also spread far beyond theEuropean settlements to regions where people had never heard of theEuropeans, for the disease adapted to conditions in the New World and movedon its own (Crosby 2 2-2 3). Columbus directed groups of the healthy among his crews to explore the island's inland regions and find the fabulous gold mines they all were sure existed. INTRODUCTION The 5 th anniversary of the first voyage of Columbus to the NewWorld came in 1992, and this event was an occasion for celebration in bothEurope and the Americas. After the voyages of Columbus, thegeography of the world had changed with an entire new continent appearingon maps of what would soon be seen as a globe instead of a flat surface.The geography of known disease also changed as Old World diseases such assmallpox, measles, and influenza found a new population with no immunitybecause it had had no exposure to these diseases before. It became so common in the cities facingthe Atlantic that nearly all urban children soon caught it and were eitherkilled or left immune. The plague arrived in Europe in October of 1347 when Genoesemerchants came from the Middle East to the island of Sicily off the coastof southern Italy, bringing the disease with them. The Europeans had had aparticularly terrible experience with disease because of the spread of theplague. There were some diseases in the New World before Columbus, and peopledid die from them. These diseases, once unleashed, did notdisappear and instead recurred periodically throughout later history.Smallpox was a major killer, and this is the only disease mankind believesit has wiped out. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.Duiker, William J. One thing that is wrong with the revisionistview is that it holds Columbus personally responsible for all that followedhis exploratory journey. The Native Americans had their own version of medicine to counterthose diseases they had. In the colonies, however, it struckindigenous young and old and was the worst of all diseases. While somepeople did cross the sea before Columbus, Crosby says they must have beenvery healthy to make such a journey. The indigenous peoples of the NewWorld, however, were not immune and died by the millions. TheEuropeans themselves were usually immune to the pathogen, just as they wereto other Old World childhood diseases. Many native Americans considered traditional medicine as sacredand would not discuss healing practice with non-Natives. Crosby, a leading historian of the Columbian Exchange,emphasizes that the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia wereisolated from Old World germs prior to the coming of Columbus. World History: Volume I: To 18 . TheSpanish took advantage of the situation at every turn: Wherever the marauding, diseased, and heavily armed Spanish forces went out on patrol, accompanied by ferocious armored dogs that had been trained to kill and disembowel, they preyed on the local communities--already plague-enfeebled--forcing them to supply food and women and slaves, and whatever else the soldiers might desire (Stannard 69). However, the great plagues that beset the Old World andthat brought entire societies in Asia, Africa, and Europe to their kneesdid not emerge on their own among the native peoples of the WesternHemisphere; among the diseases not found in the New World were smallpox,measles, bubonic plague, diphtheria, influenza, malaria, yellow fever,typhoid, and others. Because they lived in small groups, they also hadlittle opportunity to acquire diseases from others. Disease wastherefore one element in the ongoing genocide perpetrated by the Spanishand other European conquerors. Mortalityrates for the plague were extremely high, and Italy was especially hard hitby the disease. Whatdiseases there were consisted primarily of gastrointestinal disease andvarious minor infections, and even these had been mitigated by thousands ofyears of exposure to them, as well as by generally beneficent livingconditions and more than adequate nutrition (Stannard 54). Onesuggested some sort of intestinal infection, and another thought it to bemalaria. Most adults hadalready had it and were immune. The incubation period for smallpoxis ten to fourteen days, which is long enough for an infected person totravel a good distance even by horseback, canoe, or wagon. This would have been adevastating disease, much as it was in 1918 when it killed at least2 , , people worldwide in a great epidemic (Stannard 68). The Spanish carried diseaseswith them everywhere without suffering from the ill effects themselves--some did get sick, but generally they did not die of these diseases. smallpox then returned periodically, usually every three decades orso, and destroyed more and more indigenous peoples, as reports bymissionaries and traders show. In addition tothe plague, Europe was affected by such devastating illnesses as leprosy,ergotism, scurvy, cholera, smallpox, measles, diphtheria, typhus,tuberculosis, and influenza. Recent studies conducted in great detail show that large-scale sedentarysocieties in the Americas, where such diseases could have taken hold, didnot. The ocean provided a natural barrier keeping thesediseases in the Old World, Africa, and Asia until Columbus carried themwith him and his men. These conditions thereforerendered the Native Americans relatively healthy (Viola and Margolis 192). Crosby cites asan example the case of the Abipones with whom the missionary MartinDobrizhoffer was living in the middle of the eighteenth century inParaguay. Smallpox and yellow fever have also been suggested. The pattern that emerged would be repeated throughout the New World.The pathogen devastated a population unaccustomed to disease of this sort.The Spanish soldiers followed the plague and asked for gold from thesurvivors or information on where to find it. The natives did not have any immunity to thesediseases, so a disease like smallpox could wipe out huge numbers of people:"Such devastating contagion was simply unknown in the histories of the Creeor other indigenous peoples of the Americas" (Stannard 53). The Black Death was the first major epidemic disease to strikeEurope since the seventh century, and this also made it all the morehorrible to a people not accustomed to this sort of tragedy. Smallpoxis an infection which usually passes from one person to another by breath,and it was one of the most communicable of diseases and one of thedeadliest of the time. Cities such as Rouen were affected moreseverely, with losses of 3 to 4 percent. and Jackson J. The first recorded case of smallpox in British of French NorthAmerica emerged among the Algonkins of Massachusetts in the early 163 s,and the death rats among the Indians rose very high. In either case, they were no longer a medium forthe propagation of the disease. The disease would pass back and forth through New York andsurrounding areas for decades, reducing the population of the Huron byhalf. The plague was only one of the diseases affecting Europe at thistime. American Holocaust. "Disabled American Indians: A Special Population Requiring Special Considerations." American Indian Culture and Research Journal 13 (1988), 83-1 4.Sale, Kirkpatrick. According to studies of ancient small-scale migratory societies, eventhose in such harsh environments as those of the frigid northwesternplains, show that they consisted of people who seem to have lived longlives without significant infectious conditions or even much seriousinjury. The population of Europe did not begin to recover untilthe end of the fifteenth century, and it would not be until the middle ofthe sixteenth century that Europe would begin to regain the level ofpopulation it had enjoyed in the thirteenth century. Pneumonic plague was less frequentin occurrence than bubonic plague, which was fortunate because it is morevirulent: In pneumonic plague, the bacterial infection spread to the lungs, resulting in severe coughing, bloody sputum, and the relatively easy spread of the bacillus from human to human by coughing (Duiker and Spielvogel 488). To this day there are arguments among researchers about the presenceor absence of some diseases in the population of the New world, such astuberculosis and syphilis. Smallpox killed half of theArawacks on EspaZola then leaped the straits to Puerto Rico and the otherGreater Antilles, where it devastated that population. The healthy flee and leavethe sick behind to face certain death, though those who flee often take thedisease with them without knowing it. The crowded cities of that country lost 5 to 6 percentof their population. Works CitedAvery, C. When chance provided the means for thedisease to cross to the Americas some two decades later, it came either bymeans of a few smallpox scabs in a bale of waste cloth or through theserial infection of a few immunologically virgin hidalgos from ruralCastile who traveled to the colonies in search of their fortune. Lawrence to the west in the GreatLakes region. There is no evidence, however,that either disease was at all widespread in either North or South America. Around 15 , however, it evolved to a more virulent form and nowhad a tendency to kill is hosts. However, thereported symptoms show that the disease was not syphilis, malaria, yellowfever, or smallpox. The symptoms of the bubonic plaguethen began to appear in Europe--high fever, aching joints, swelling of thelymph nodes, and dark blotches caused by bleeding beneath the skin. PRE-COLUMBIAN AMERICA Columbus and his men introduced diseases into the New World whichkilled thousands of Indians who were not immune to organisms that had longsince ceased to have any adverse effects on the Europeans. Navajo and otherSouthwestern tribes consider medicine and religion as virtually identical,and restoration of health may be achieved through ceremonies, prayers,rituals, and use of botanical medicines often made into salves, ointments,teas, and purgatives (Avery). The mass of diseases were attributed by the superstitious to cometsand other astral influences, to storms, to the failure of crops, tofamines, to the effects of drought or flood, to swarms of insects, and soon, but the real reasons could be found in crowded conditions and badsanitation in the walled medieval towns and in the squalor, misrule, andgross immorality accompanying war. It was also the occasion for much bitterness andanger by revisionists who wanted to downgrade the achievement of Columbusbecause of a perception that his discovery of America in the long runcaused more harm than good. Thebubonic form was actually the least toxic form of the plague, but it stillkilled 5 to 6 percent of its victims. They fled when smallpox appeared among them, which often onlyspread the disease further (Crosby 2 1-2 2). THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE Columbus's second voyage to the New World brought sickness with it.The fleet arrived in January of 1494 on the northern coast of Hispaniolawhere Columbus had chosen to build his New World capital, the town ofIsabela. Entire villages in England andGermany simply disappeared under the onslaught of the disease: In Germany, of approximately 17 , inhabited locations, only 13 , were left by the end of the fourteenth century (Duiker and Spielvogel 489).Estimates have been made stating that the population of Europe declined by25 to 5 percent between 1347 an 1351: If we accept the recent scholarly assessment of a European population of 75 million in the early fourteenth century, this means a death toll in four years of 19 to 38 million people (Duiker and Spielvogel 489).The plague in fact did not end in 1351, and further outbreaks brought moredevastation in 1361-1362 and 1369. In 1348the plague continued its march into France and the Low Countries and theninto Germany, and by the end of that year, it had reached England. Usually, eighty percent of the victims were under theage of ten, and seventy percent were under the age of two. The effects of smallpox are terrifying. Other diseases would in time become somewhat more benignas the people of the New World, through exposure, would gain a measure ofimmunity as the Europeans had in the Middle Ages. The disease involves feverand pain. New York: West Publishing, 1994.Hodge, F. The farming villages of northern France sufferedmortality rates of 3 percent. These diseases were deadly on a scale it isdifficult to imagine (Sale 34). Soon, pustules appear, sometimes destroying the skin andtransforming the victim into a gory horror. This as well isblamed on Columbus, though clearly he could not have known that this wouldbe the result of his visit, even if he had known that he was arriving in acompletely New World and not in India as he thought he was. When Columbus arrived in thearea, there were two to three million Arawak-speaking people in theAntilles, and within a hundred years they were extinct (Viola and Margolis191). Europe at the time was also overrunwith wandering soldiers, students, and other vagabonds, and the populacewas beset by superstition, ignorance, and uncleanliness. Itarrived in the colonies sometime around Christmas of 1518, cutting a wideswath through the Tainos. New York: Alfred A. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.