Diamond Enthusiast


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That's a really hard question to answer because of the way medicine was done in late medieval times. Many skin conditions were called 'leprosy', fevers were classified by how many days they lasted, and so forth.
There is a reference to a new contagious disease called the 'English Sweating Sickness' which broke out in 1854, 1507, 1528, 1551 and 1578. The mortality rate was about 50%. It might have been a severe form of influenza. All we can say is the timing was about right for a new disease brought from the Americas.
It was once thought that venereal diseases were brought to Europe about that time, but since they can only be identified with certainty by identification of the organism itself, this is undetermined. Syphilis might have been classed with leprosy in earlier times because both can cause horrible skin conditions. And diseases transmitted sexually were known since ancient times, just not well classified.
The so-called 'black death' broke out in 1499, 'plague' in 1569, 'black death' in 1587, 'plague' in 1591, 'black death' in 1597, 1602, 1625, 1635, 1654, 1663, 1664, 1665 and 1666, 1667, 1668, 1672, 1675, 1678, 1679, 1680, 1681 and 1682, 'bubonic plague' 1628, 'epidemic' in 1694. This lists major epidemics up to 1700. These are the ones which may have been misclassified.
Of course smallpox and typhus epidemics occurred during those years, too, but they are more easily identified by symptoms and had been around long before the Americas were discovered.
But it doesn't look as if a terrible plague was loosed similar to the plagues of smallpox and tuberculosis which Europeans brought to North America, unless some classified 'plague' or 'black death' were misclassified.
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