Negative Effects Of The Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange was the transfer of ideas, animals, plants to new places to look more familiar, specifically related to European colonization after Columbus; from the Old World to the New World. Invasive species such as earthworms didnt exist before the Columbian exchange; palnts like dandelions didn't exist either. The byproduct of this exchange was the mixing of cultures through food and animals that would forever change the landscape that people know so much about certain areas, such as oranges in Florida, or tomatoes in Italy. Unfortunately a negative byproduct of this exchange was the exchange of diseases to vulnerable poupulations. Some diseases tramsitted by the Europens were diseases such as “smallpox, measles, malaria, yellow fever, influenza,” (Malone, Cary et al.) and other Old Wolrd diseases. This devestaing elemet of the transmisson of European diseases is the easibility in which the diseases were passed; through air. Native Americans didnt have to come inot contact with Europeans to become infected with their diseases. Their immune systems hadnt experienced the Old World diseases, populations and cultures were wiped

“Syphilis, an Old World disease, had a severe effect on Europeans, ”(Malone, Cary et al.) brought on by the nature of the sailors who arrived to the Americas, and their brash nature, this sexually transmited disease passed onto Europeans. It is debated whether these sexual contacts happened organically, or was another manifestation of the Early Europeans violent nature, but, this sexually transmitted disease passed back into the motherland once Europeans came home from their “duties”. Syphillis is an disease unlike others from the Old World that eventually “fill up the graveyards and then go away” as Crosby once said, syphillis became a permanent disease that “and became a permanent factor in human existence.” (Malone, Cary et