This book is the publication of… 3 Crosby, "Virgin Soil Epidemics," 292. n 1. soil that has not been cultivated before 2. Epidemic refers to a sudden increase in the number of cases of a disease above what is normally expected. Additional documents recount virgin soil epidemics from the perspectives of the Spaniards and the native peoples inflicted by diseases unfamiliar to them. The Impact of European Diseases on Native Americans Overview. … Definition. Many of the epidemic diseases that were well established in the Old World were absent from the Americas before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Subsistence Strategy and Demographic Impact of Virgin Soil Disease Epidemics WILLIAM MORGAN University of Winnipeg Introduction It has long been acknowledged that New World Indian populations were devastated in terms of demographics by the introduction of Old World communicable diseases immediately subsequent to European contact. Outbreak carries the same definition as an epidemic but is often used to describe a more limited geographic event. The first three documents address the pre-contact health of the peoples inhabiting the Western Hemisphere. Contact between Europeans and Native Americans led to a demographic disaster of unprecedented proportions. Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America. It should also be asked why the decline in numbers of the American aborigines went on as long as it did, 400 years or so, in contrast to the decline caused by Europe's most famous virgin soil epidemic, the Black Death, disease as children, while the latter was a completely virgin soil population. With the number of emerging infectious diseases climbing and new revelations about plague's past, this book is a timely caution to the rhetoric surrounding so-called virgin soil epidemics. The term epidemic derives from a word form attributed to Homer's Odyssey, which later took its medical meaning from the Epidemics, a treatise by Hippocrates. Edited by Catherine Cameron, Paul Kelton and Alan Swedlund. The catastrophic epidemics that accompanied the European conquest … Define virgin soil. virgin soil synonyms, virgin soil pronunciation, virgin soil translation, English dictionary definition of virgin soil. The term "virgin soil populations" was coined by Alfred … Before Hippocrates, epidemios, epidemeo, epidamos, and other variants had meanings similar to the current definitions of "indigenous" or "endemic". University of Arizona Press, 2015. 4 For a challenge of another aspect of virgin soil theory, the assumption that new epidemics caused Indian cultures and religions to wither as quickly as Indian bodies, see Paul Kelton, "Avoiding the Smallpox Spirits: Colonial Epidemics and Southeastern Indian Survival," Ethnohistory, 50o (Fall 2oo3).