That’s right; Columbus and his crew were the first to officially visit the new world (being the Americas). Syphilis, or at least a precursor condition, is known to be a disease which started over there. So, it looks like the sailors literally plundered the new world and came back to share their ‘booty’ with the rest of Europe. Nice.
Thanks to some recent carbon dating and other complicated tests meant to analyse the dead or simply ancient, it’s become clear that syphilis didn’t exist in Europe until Columbus and his crew came back from the New World. For 50 years it was a much more violent condition as no one had any immunity to it at all due to its non-existence in Europe until that time, after this half century it had evolved into what we now recognise as syphilis and guess what, it’s stuck with us ever since.
This new information is really only an interesting fact. It’s a titbit of information which reveals the origins of a disease and for that reason it’s interesting but it doesn’t really tell us anything more than that. It’s not going to revolutionise the way the condition is treated and it’s not going to defame Columbus in every real way, all it’ll do is make us take a long look at the past and our ancestors and realise they were just as dirty and sexual as we are today!