Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA.
Am J Phys Anthropol. 2011;146 Suppl 53:99-133. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.21613.
For nearly 500 years, scholars have argued about the origin and antiquity of syphilis. Did Columbus bring the disease from the New World to the Old World? Or did syphilis exist in the Old World before 1493? Here, we evaluate all 54 published reports of pre-Columbian, Old World treponemal disease using a standardized, systematic approach. The certainty of diagnosis and dating of each case is considered, and novel information pertinent to the dating of these cases, including radiocarbon dates, is presented. Among the reports, we did not find a single case of Old World treponemal disease that has both a certain diagnosis and a secure pre-Columbian date. We also demonstrate that many of the reports use nonspecific indicators to diagnose treponemal disease, do not provide adequate information about the methods used to date specimens, and do not include high-quality photographs of the lesions of interest. Thus, despite an increasing number of published reports of pre-Columbian treponemal infection, it appears that solid evidence supporting an Old World origin for the disease remains absent.
近 500 年来，学者们一直在争论梅毒的起源和古老性。是哥伦布将这种疾病从新大陆带到旧大陆的吗？还是梅毒在 1493 年之前就已经存在于旧大陆？在这里，我们使用标准化、系统的方法评估了所有 54 份关于哥伦布前旧大陆密螺旋体病的已发表报告。我们考虑了每个病例的诊断确定性和日期，并提出了与这些病例日期相关的新信息，包括放射性碳日期。在这些报告中，我们没有发现一个既有明确诊断又有可靠哥伦布前日期的旧大陆密螺旋体病病例。我们还表明，许多报告使用非特异性指标来诊断密螺旋体病，没有提供有关用于对标本进行日期标记的方法的足够信息，并且没有包括感兴趣病变的高质量照片。因此，尽管发表了越来越多的关于哥伦布前密螺旋体感染的报告，但似乎仍然缺乏支持该疾病起源于旧大陆的确凿证据。
