Columbian Exchange III. Diseases

If the exchange of plants and animals between the Old and the New World, resulting from the oceanic voyages started in 1492, was of mutual benefit, there is no question that the exchange of diseases was almost one-directional and devastating for Native Americans.

We are painfully aware of the consequences of a viral infection. Europeans brought with them a series of deadly virus and bacteria like measles, smallpox, influenza, cholera, mumps, typhus, malaria and whooping cough, just to name some.

Transmission electron micrograph of smallpox virions (commons.wikimedia.org)

As Dobyns says “Before the invasion of peoples of the New World by pathogens that evolved among inhabitants of the Old World, Native Americans lived in a relatively disease-free environment.” In other words, they were immunologically defenseless. Estimates suggest that in the first century after Columbus’ voyage, the Native American population dropped down to 5–20% of the original inhabitants.

Witness to this massive loss of life was the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún, author of the Florentine Codex, a 16th-century ethnographic research study in Meso-America entitled La historia universal de las cosas de Nueva España (Universal History of the Things of New Spain). He learned the Aztec language and transcribed history and customs as told him by the Aztec elders.

“But before the Spaniards had risen against us, first there came to be prevalent a great sickness, a plague. It was in Tepeilhuitl that it originated, that there spread over the people a great destruction of men. Some it indeed covered [with pustules]; they were spread everywhere, on one’s face, on one’s head, on one’s breast, etc. There was indeed perishing; many indeed died of it. No longer could they walk; they only lay in their abodes, in their beds. No longer could they move, no longer could they bestir themselves, no longer could they raise themselves, no longer could they stretch themselves out face down, no longer could they stretch themselves out on their backs.” (Book XII, translation by Anderson and Dibble).

Image of smallpox disease form the Florentine Codex (commons.wikimedia.org)

Although still under discussion, it seems that the Europeans brought back from America venereal syphilis, a disease that in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was frequently fatal and with much more severe symptoms than nowadays (Nunn and Qian, 2010). While not decimating the population, it was still a disease which caused remarkable social disruption. [Silvana Munzi]

Beware the Edge of the Earth!

When you reach that page where they say sailors were afraid of the ship falling down the edge of the earth, you know you have reached the moment to close the book.

The awareness of the earth’s sphericity, in fact, has been a cultural heritage since ancient times, and common to many civilizations traditionally mentioned as “ancient” and “medieval”, such as the Hellenistic, the Christian, the Islamic, the Indian, and the Chinese. Philosophers (Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Isidore of Seville, Bede the Venerable), astronomers (Eratosthenes, Al-Farghānī), geographers (Strabo, Ptolemy), and mathematicians (Ibn Hazm, Al-Biruni, Shen Kuo), with very few and marginal exceptions, helped to pass on and fix this awareness essential to navigation and voyages, which only in relatively recent times has been questioned.

This “Myth of the Flat Earth,” part of a rather progressionist narrative, has been pinned down in detail and it is mostly due to some 19th-century American and English authors. What is amazing is how stubborn and reoccurring this fictional view of the “good flat earthers of old” has been over decades.

In any case, what is relevant from our nautical end is to make this clear: it is totally inconceivable that sailors on board a 15th or 16th-century Iberian ship would entertain any idea of a flat earth. Not only is the curvature of the earth very obviously observable when at sea, but it is also that the techno-scientific environment in the oceanic vessels was imbued with a sophisticated cosmography, heir to countless centuries of study. Crews aboard the Columbus and Magellan expeditions, just to name the most prominent examples, may have had other grievances and misgivings, but certainly not that they would fall down the edge of the earth—their “job” made them part of an elite fully acquainted with a wealth of cutting-edge navigational knowledge, perhaps comparable to something between our aviators and astronauts. [Acevedo/Moreno Madrid/Salomoni]

How to Establish a Maritime Route: The Case of the Strait of Magellan (2/3)

Where were we a few weeks ago? Oh yes! The Pelican—renamed as Golden Hind before reaching the Fuegian channel—was entering the waters of the Strait of Magellan on August 21, 1578. Although commanded by Francis Drake, the British fleet counted on the invaluable help of Nuno da Silva—a Portuguese pilot that Drake kidnapped in the island of Santiago de Cabo Verde—to reach and cross the Strait. The corsair held Da Silva in high esteem, and the technical documents written by the Portuguese certify his “top level” sailing skills.

Excerpt from Nuno da Silva’s Logbook
Archivo General de Indias, Patronato 33, N.3, R.30.

While Drake was beginning his piratical activities in the Pacific, his Vice-Admiral, John Winter, delved into the Strait to return to England. This return journey allowed him to go down in history as the third man to go through the Strait in a West-East direction and as the discoverer of the medicinal virtues of the Drymis winteri bark to deal with scurvy. Supposedly, also a small boat of Drake’s fleet, captained by Peter Curder, would have returned to England by undoing the path through the Strait.

Canelo (Drymis winteri). The bark of this tree became known as Winter’s Bark.

Thus, the Door to the Pacific—and to the Spanish riches it contained—was also opened to English ships. Obviously, this fact set off all the alarms in Philip II’s court. The response to Drake’s boldness was to send a fleet to the Strait under the command of Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (1579–1580), a man well-versed in nautical issues. His mission was to collect as much information as possible on the Fuegian channel, in order to fortify the passage and to avoid unwelcome guests. The documentary result of the expedition was an outstanding brand new rutter for the Strait and some nautical charts. However, the fortification project never materialized; in light of this, some of Drake’s compatriots began to set a course for the coveted channel. Thomas Cavendish crossed the Strait in 1587, and then completed the third circumnavigation of the Earth; Andrew Merrick tried to follow in his footsteps in 1590, but he did not go past Cape Froward; Cavendish again, in 1592, tried to repeat his own achievement, but he also ran into Cape Froward. Finally, it was Richard Hawkins in 1594 who managed to reach the Pacific again through the Strait, in an interesting journey that can be read in The Observations of Sir Richard Hawkins (1622).

Do not miss the third part of the series to find out which nation took over from the English sailors on the Strait of Magellan! [José María Moreno Madrid]