Hi Joanne,
I've searched for everything from the common cold to leprosy, and everything in between.
Did you know there's THREE types of plague/Black Death? Bubonic, Pneumonic and Septicemic?
I no longer fear Ebola like I did but some of necrotising (flesh eating) viruses are even more terrifying.
Also, monkeys, cats and dogs carry [a very similar disease to] HIV/AIDS but it's Simian, Feline and Canine Immunodeficiency Virus.
AND - this is the sickest, over 80% of koalas carry chlamydia. Those gorgeous, cuddly Aussie mini-bears are dripping with chlamydia!
Leprosy and Black Death (all three variations) are no longer even serious. A wide spectrum antibiotic from your GP will sort out both
but medical science is still unsure of what, exactly, the Sweating Sickness was. It arrived in 1485, some think it arrived in Britain with Henry Tudor's army who fought, and won, Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth, Aug 22nd, 1485 (before burying him under the job center car park in Leicester. The Sweating Sickness was the most deadly and feared ailment for the next 66 years, arriving for its latest tour of death and devastation in 1551 - before disappearing as sudden;y as it had arrived, never to return again.
Syphilis almost certainly was brought back to Europe with the returning sailors and crew who first went to the Americas with Columbus, in 1492.
So when Europeans are attacked for wiping out much of the Native American population with smallpox, bubonic plague, chickenpox, cholera, the common cold, diphtheria, influenza, malaria, measles, scarlet fever, sexually transmitted diseases (with the possible exception of syphilis), typhoid, typhus and tuberculosis (though no one, European or otherwise, understood germ theory before 1861) and the fact that Europeans introduced alcohol, plus metallurgically better blades and firearms - MENTION that Europeans received syphilis, tobacco, cocaine and guinea pig from the Americas.
532 years later and I still cannot understand why anyone would have brought back a guinea pig?