1492.

• “The most momentous event for human health was Clubus’ landflal in 1492 on Hispaniola.”
• The worst “health” disaster ever.
• New world peoples had developed traditional medicines, Rx.
• No immunity to influenza, smallpox, measles, typhus, etc: est. by 1600, 90% of original population dead in successive epidemics.
• Conquered by guns and germs.
• Drastic population loss spurred importation of slaves from Africa, some 20,000,000, ....  "causing cruelty and suffering on a scale not matched until the regimes of Hitler and Stalin.” [166]

Syphilis.

• origins obscure.
• 1st outbreak, 1493-94 Italy.
• Cause: treponema spirochete bacterium [other related are yaws, bejel, pinta]
• Perhaps hybrid vigor?
• Old World selective pressure on New world bacterium?
• social disruptions?
• Epidemics in general bad 1500s.  E.G. English sweat -

The Medical Renaissance

 Vitruvius man = emblem
 Graecophilia, 1453 ff
 
• Ad fontes
• Leoniceno
• 1525 Complete works of Galen in Greek, Aldine Press, Venice
• Sylvius
• humanism spurred innovation
• practica
• methods
• Santorio
• an experimenter
• astrology, alchemy, and Neo Platonism
• Ficino, Pico
• Fernel
• Fracastorius, Syphilis sive morbus gallicus.
• seed theory of disease [not micro-organisms]
• Hg treatment: salivation and sweating.
• tubbing; hypothermia