Introduction: When Europeans arrived in the western hemisphere they brought diseases with them links to a world of disease that Native Americans to had never been exposed to before. Needless to say, it is now quite well documented that the diseases, which the Native Americans were now being exposed to, had an impact of killing off large percentages of Native groups. Below you will find a two lists of diseases. Click the disease to find out more about it. This list was taken from the book by Robert Boyd, The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence: Introduced Infectious Diseases and Population Decline Among Northwest Coast Indians, 1774-1874 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999) p. 15.

The following is a list of Native American diseases here before the time of Columbus.

Native American Diseases

1. salmonella & other food poisons

2. Fungal diseases: some tineas, blastomycosis, etc.

3. Diseases caused by intestinal parasites: tapeworms, roundworms, pinworms

4. Streptococcus and staphylococcus

5. Shigellosis (shigella dysenteriae)

6. Gastroenteritis

7. Hepatitis

8. Encephalitis

9. Viral Pneumonia

10. Tuberculosis

11. Nonvenereal Syphilis

12. Pinta

13. Venereal syphilis

14. Rheumatoid Arthritis

15. American Trypanosomiasis

16. American Leishmaniasis

17. Bartonelliosis

Here is a list of “disease imports.” Diseases which arrived with Europeans as they arrived in the western hemisphere.

Disease Imports

1. smallpox

2. malaria

3. viral influenza

4. yellow fever

5. measles

6. typhus

7. bubonic plague

8. typhoid fever

9. cholera

10. pertussis

11. diptheria

12. scarlatina

13. chicken pox/shingles

14. polio

15. amebiasis

16. trachoma

17. hookworm and