WI: Old World Immune to Syphilis

The Europeans brought with them many diseases to America, which devastated local populations, but the Native Indians also gave the Europeans the disease of Syphilis, to which the Europeans and the people of the Old World had no immunity. It remained untreatable until antibiotics, at least so far as I know.

What if, by a stroke of evolutionary luck or whatever would be needed, the people of the Old World were immune from Syphilis?
 
The Europeans brought with them many diseases to America, which devastated local populations, but the Native Indians also gave the Europeans the disease of Syphilis, to which the Europeans and the people of the Old World had no immunity. It remained untreatable until antibiotics, at least so far as I know.

What if, by a stroke of evolutionary luck or whatever would be needed, the people of the Old World were immune from Syphilis?

Well it's a matter of when, the old Syphilis was the type that made flesh fall off, fortunately it has evolved to become much more benign today to what may be considered a punch-line for reckless sex. That being said there's nothing to say that the mutation wouldn't expose another genetic weakness to some ordinarily benign disease.

But in an isolated context the lack of Syphilis wouldn't mean much, after all it required direct fluid contact which generally limited it's spread.
 
Immunology doesn't work that way. Once the bacteria is able to infect people, it will be able to infect people regardless of their location. It's possible to be made temporarily immune to some bacteria, but bacteria are more 'clever' than viruses in this respect. Unlike with, say, smallpox, where you can be infected by a mild relative of the disease and live your whole life without fear of the variola virus, bacteria can and will reinfect you.

There may be isolated villages where people are immune to syphilis just as there were villages were people seem to have been immune to the black death, but getting all of Europe to have this sort of superpowered immune system is unlikely.

Finally, I'm personally skeptical that syphillis is a new world disease. The fact that there was an outbreak of a virulent strain around the time of the first European explorations in the Americas is correlation, not causation.
 

NothingNow

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Finally, I'm personally skeptical that syphillis is a new world disease. The fact that there was an outbreak of a virulent strain around the time of the first European explorations in the Americas is correlation, not causation.

Thing is, there isn't anything close to Syphilis evident in Europe save Bejel (which would've been evident in literature if it predated Syphilis,) so it probably came from trans-atlantic contact, then mutated into Bejel.
The new world is lousy with Treponema species, and their related diseases, like Pinta and Yaws.
 
There's three theories out there about the origin of syphilis:

  1. The Columbian theory, that the disease existed in the Americas only and was brought to Europe as part of the Columbian exchange.
  2. The pre-Columbian theory, that the disease has been present in Europe since antiquity. Under this theory, the disease had long been misclassified as a form of leprosy. A major outbreak occurred coincidentally shortly after 1492, and it was then classified as a "new" disease.
  3. The combination theory, that there were two strains of the disease: an extremely nasty but not particularly contagious Old World form, and a mild but highly contagious New World form. The two strains combined during the Columbian exchange to produce the modern form. The original Old World form presumably went extinct, while the original New World form is still around as Yaws (a skin disease closely related to syphilis).
The main evidence for #1 has been the absence of reports of syphilis in Europe before 1492, and the universal belief that it was a new disease when it show up.



The main pieces of evidence for theories #2 and #3 have been pre-Columbian European skeletons that show bone damage that looks like it was caused by syphilis, combined with some written descriptions of leprosy that sound more like advanced cases of syphilis than like Hansen's Disease (true leprosy).


A 2011 study systematically analyzed the skeletal evidence for pre-Columbian syphilis in Europe, and came to the conclusion that none of the skeletons were both 1) definitely syphilis, and 2) definitely pre-Columbian. It's not conclusive proof of the Columbian theory, but it certainly appears to undermine the evidence for the pre-Columbian and combination theories.
 
The main evidence for #1 has been the absence of reports of syphilis in Europe before 1492, and the universal belief that it was a new disease when it show up.

But take that with a grain of salt, since so many plagues and diseases go unrecorded/recorded wrongly.
 
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