LL-L 'History' 2006.08.08 (03) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 08 August 2006 * Volume 03
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L 'History' 2006.08.07 (07) [E]

>From: 'ANNETTE GIESBRECHT' <beautyaround at email.com>
>Subject: LL-L 'History' 2006.08.06 (03) [E]
>
>I think all of us realize that at a time with no central heating, diseases such
>as the common cold, let alone pneumonia the flu, and others were fatal. There
>were probably diseases that the Native Americans had a natural immunity but the
>settlers did not. People kind of forget that, because they always talk about the
>diseases such as measles and small pox that us 'horrible' Europeans brought over.
>
No, hardly. I grew up without central heating - in the winter all rooms
except the one with the fire were freezing, and we slept in a freezing
bedroom, ill or otherwise. This was the norm throughout my village.
Neither colds nor flu were considered a threat to life.

I think the Europeans did pretty much import all diseases into North
America. The reason that we had lots of diseases to give to the Natives
and they had none to kindly gift us in return was that Europeans
normally kept a variety of animals on their land and very often in their
houses. This close proximity of species, along with lack of space and
hygiene, gave rise to many interesting mutant viruses and bacteria that
developed the ability to infect and gestate in the animals (including
humans) that they lived amongst.

Usually syphilis is quoted as the one disease the Native Americans did
give us, but there's no evidence for this at all.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: History

Sandy,

I have a sneaking suspicion that what contributed to the unproven allegation that
indigenous people gave Europeans diseases is that many Europeans got tropical
deseases, such as malaria and yellow fever.  At the time, people didn't know the
difference between human-to-human transmission and other forms of contracting
diseases, and the said diseases affected native populations as well.  Besides, in
the early days America, Asia or whatever was pretty much the same to most folks,
loosely falling into the category of "India."

As for syphilis, there are basically two schools of thought: the "Columbian" one
that attributes it to contacts with the Americas and the "pre-Columbian" one that
believes it had existed in Eurasia long before that, that its symptoms had
already been described by Hippocrates (ca. 460 BC – ca. 377 BC).

> I grew up without central heating - in the winter all rooms
> except the one with the fire were freezing, and we slept in a freezing
> bedroom, ill or otherwise. This was the norm throughout my village.
> Neither colds nor flu were considered a threat to life.

Same here.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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