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Charles E. Rupprecht
Editor

History of Rabies
in the Americas:
From the Pre-Columbian
to the Present, Volume I
Insights to Specific Cross-Cutting
Aspects of the Disease in the Americas
Editor
Charles E. Rupprecht
LYSSA LLC
Lawrenceville, GA, USA

ISSN 2509-6745     ISSN 2509-6753 (electronic)

Fascinating Life Sciences
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Foreword

Rabies is very well known since ancient times. The Codex Eshnunna (ca. ~2000
BCE) is a frequently quoted document suggesting evidence that the disease was
widespread in antiquity, and that it was associated with dogs. Since then, rabies in
dogs, and sometimes wildlife, in Europe and the Middle East was reported sporadi-
cally. However, this book is not about rabies in the earliest Orient and Europe – it is
about the disease in the Americas. Here, it was long recognized that rabies was
spread by carnivores, including dogs. The disease transmitted by hematophagous
bats (“vampires”) was, and still is, of great concern. Vampires not only infect people
but also predominantly livestock, having an important economic impact, as well as
a role in conservation biology, considering effects upon other wildlife. Throughout
the twentieth century, it became evident that rabies in bats was not limited to vam-
pires but is also very widespread in insectivorous and other bats throughout the
Americas. After some delay, rabies was also found in other wild mammalian species.
Today, rabies epidemiology as described in wildlife disease handbooks is often
too simplistic: the virus transforms the infected animal into a berserk biting machine
that attacks every moving object. The reality is much more complicated.
Susceptibility, patterns of virus excretion, length of incubation, and duration of
clinical disease must be correlated with the population biology of the principal host
to maintain the epizootic. Nevertheless, some highly susceptible taxa (e.g., rodent
and lagomorph spp.) are highly susceptible to experimental infection but are hardly
ever found rabid among naturally diseased wildlife. The behavior of potential vec-
tors and victims is also significant. Avoidance of diseased (conspecific and allospe-
cific) vectors must be of influence, but the opposite occurs as well, as European roe
deer were observed to expose themselves by harassing paralyzed foxes, similar to
New World livestock investigating rabid skunks.
Though it was obvious for quite some time that different species of Carnivora
and Chiroptera were hosting different epidemiological variants of the virus, the dis-
covery of a wide variety with newly developed techniques confirmed this notion.
The twentieth century brought progress in the understanding of disease agents in

v
vi Foreword

general and in methods for studying these viruses. Inclusion bodies (Negri bodies)
in nerve cells were long considered pathognomonic for rabies. However, other
infections also cause the formation of inclusion bodies in neurons. Hence, the intro-
duction of immunofluorescence, which combined morphology and a specific immu-
nological reaction, was most important and facilitated the discovery of the disease
in numerous mammalian species. The detection of rabies virus antibodies in human
and animal sera with neutralization tests is significant, particularly to verify vacci-
nation success. Numerous other tests for immunity were developed in recent years.
Many of them have issues with sensitivity and specificity that are not completely
solved. While properly collected sera in the laboratory usually have a satisfactory
ratio between sensitivity and specificity, this is quite a different matter with blood
taken under less-than-ideal field conditions. I recommend consuming with a grain
of salt reports on the high frequency of rabies virus antibodies in sera of wildlife,
free-ranging dogs, and fluids that could contain impurities that may interfere with
the test.
During the twentieth century, we learned how to identify virus variants in the
laboratory. Molecular biology initiated a new era of rabies research. Gene sequenc-
ing permitted not only more precise differentiation between different virus variants,
but also allowed the reconstruction of their phylogenetic relationships. This com-
bined with phylogeographic analysis has greatly enhanced our understanding of the
evolution of these viruses and aspects of their transmission dynamics. The develop-
ment of monoclonal antibodies is also an achievement of the past century.
Monoclonal antibodies, often applied in indirect immunofluorescence to acetone-­
fixed brain smears, are sometimes called the workhorses for rapid viral variant iden-
tification, especially within Latin America.
The culling of rabies vector populations is a procedure practiced since antiquity
to the present. In the Americas, it was mostly applied to dog populations, sometimes
also to wildlife. For example, vampire bat colonies are destroyed in the vicinity of
outbreaks of bovine paralytic rabies. With growing opposition to poisoning rabies
vectors, the use of vaccination became more attractive. Vaccines for domestic ani-
mals were incorporated into disease prevention and control schemes. The late Dr.
George Baer’s discovery that foxes can be immunized orally with the attenuated live
vaccine ERA was a major contribution. Baits laced with ERA vaccine distributed in
fox rabies areas in Europe and North America did indeed help to control the disease.
However, the ERA rabies virus has some residual pathogenicity. It was therefore
important to develop other vaccines avoiding this problem. The solution was recom-
binant pox- and adenoviruses expressing the rabies virus glycoprotein gene.
The advancement in our understanding of rabies viruses and the biology of their
hosts is due to the efforts of multiple, individual scientists. The progress is also the
outcome of superior cooperation encouraged by international organizations. A cru-
cial stimulus that was initiated by Dr. Baer is the annual “Rabies in the Americas
Conferences.” Research in all fields is still progressing. This book is composed of
Foreword vii

accounts describing the status quo, past efforts, and current projects. It will also
stimulate and encourage new projects. Its editor, Dr. Charles Rupprecht, deserves
topmost praise for undertaking this effort.

Alexander I. Wandeler
Centre of Expertise for Rabies
Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Ottawa Laboratory-Fallowfield (retired)
Ottawa, ON, Canada
Preface

…those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it… – Jorge Agustín
Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, 1905

With pandemic fatigue all around, is now the moment for an exposition about rabies
in the “New World”? Well, that depends – our book, while focused on the basic
roots of hydrophobia, has an embedded, recurring theme of “things change, stuff
happens.” As such, such a tome was a long time coming, personally and profession-
ally. As a New Jersey kid, was hard enough to wait for the next holiday and summer
vacations. Clearly, given human limitations, no one could fathom the implications
of immense passages of geological periods, yet still hoped those grand, monstrous
“terrible lizards” might still be found alive in some far-off, poorly explored oasis
(together with just about every other child, I suppose, then and now, considering my
own now captivated grandchildren). Where did they come from and why did they
vanish? Fascination was obvious – on the topic of “beginnings” and any related
discussions on “transitions” in the natural sciences, such as “what came first, the
chicken or the egg” (of course, we all know t’was the egg!). Initiated as a “forever”
student from kindergarten to date, I was a huge fan of anything “prehistoric,” initi-
ated basic conversations with my elders on the “why things are” (even briefly flirted
with becoming a paleontologist in first grade). During the 1960s, a cherished train
trip with my father to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City’s
Central Park was a dream come true. Unfortunately, this gradual realization that all
dinos were extinct (with the exception of avian ancestors) landed hard, so I focused
upon the extant instead, content with a wonderful collection of outdoor pet turtles in
elementary school. About this time I have my earliest recollections about the
inklings of “the rabies” – first when chased by a free-ranging neighborhood dog and
secondly when my older brother found a bat roosting under the cedar shingles of our
modest Cape Cod (quickly dispatched of course because of our mom’s exaggerated
concerns over what we would “catch from those things”).
Thereafter, a professional path toward the rabies field was a tad circuitous and
accidental. In high school health class, I annoyed our gym coach by trying to under-
stand the origins of STDs. As an undergrad at the state university, attempting to

ix
x Preface

distance myself from the highly competitive “pre-med throats,” I was torn between
invertebrate and vertebrate zoology, so compromised on discipline, and majored in
ecology, after some gentle prodding by my low-key faculty advisor. Naïve to the
focused biopolitics of academia, at graduate school in Wisconsin, I philandered
with limnology, ornithology, fisheries biology, herpetology, etc., but finally settled
on zoology, with a bent toward mammalogy. This decision was all the more
cemented after meeting Merlin Tuttle – being re-introduced to that exciting and
somewhat mysterious world of bats (a focus of my Master of Science degree).
Along came my first of many later rabies vaccinations, to preclude the occupational
risk from my subjects (which Merlin of course poo-pooed and suggested if ever bit-
ten to “just squeeze out the blood”). After a stint in Panama, working on Neotropical
bats with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (where I received my first bite
from a vampire bat), and meeting a researcher investigating owl monkeys (Aotus
spp.) as models of falciparum malaria, a light bulb went off. Although “One Health”
was not yet born, I mused on embarking into “applied disease ecology and epidemi-
ology” (AKA veterinary medicine) – focused upon non-domestic species.
At the University of Pennsylvania, I was quite fortunate as one of the self-­
professed “odd-balls” to be mentored by faculty that shared a passion for the non-­
traditional (such as the late parasitologist Gerry Schad, for whom I nearly missed a
Pathology exam, because I was duly collecting discarded mesocarnivore intestines
for him from the offal at fur dealers in the hopes of finding a hint of echinococcus),
challenged by ever attempting towards anything new on rabies by epidemiologist
Larry Glickman (“everything has been done!”), and gelling with contributions down
the street from the vet school by key staff at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and
Biology (where the first human tissue culture anti-rabies vaccine and monoclonal
antibodies were created under the Old World team of the late Tad Wiktor and Hilary
Koprowski).
A career as a budding “rabiesologist” was born of these wellsprings, initially
focused as an evolving “gradual student” on the detection, characterization, and
appreciation of the dynamics of wildlife rabies virus variants (raccoon rabies was
now exploding throughout the mid-Atlantic states having just emerged in
Pennsylvania), and cemented during a post-doc opportunity on the development of
a wildlife rabies vaccine, while in the preternatural shadow of that “father of oral
vaccination,” the late CDC-ite, Jorge Baer. One would have never predicted that I
too would be recruited from north of the Mason-Dixon line to eventually serve in
that same institution in Atlanta. Like true genetic relations and parenting, you may
never truly cherish your familial and academic mentors until they are gone, and you
have become one yourself, like an antediluvian “old crocodile.” Introspective appre-
ciation of such spatio-temporal personal/professional voyages tends to mire one in
the throes of history, by definition. Queries such as “how did we arrive here” again
came naturally – reinspired by twenty-first century documentation of Native
American ancestry, hybridized with nineteenth century Old World genes, morphed
with a fascination for the true past, an affinity with indigenous peoples, and a quest
for specters of the truth in a chosen field as a born-again provocateur of same – AKA
la rage, la rabia, a raiva, die Tollwut, etc.
Preface xi

Given its age as one of the oldest documented infectious diseases and global
prominence of burden in agriculture, public health, veterinary medicine, and con-
servation biology, much has already been written about rabies history. Subjectively,
some of us feel that if the field of rabies was led clearly by Old World scientists
throughout the nineteenth century. New World contemporaries benefited greatly
from such immense background and expertise and offered their own unique account-
ing only during the later twentieth century. In kind, by comparison, the partial gen-
esis of this present work owes much to the former “Historical Perspective of Rabies
in Europe and the Mediterranean Basin” (AA King, AR Fooks, M Aubert, AI
Wandeler, eds. World Organization for Animal Health (OIE): Paris, France. 2004,
384 pp.). Hence, what seemed to be lacking was a New World perspective, as a
global companion piece. As I hope you may agree, such biomedical and natural his-
tory remains relevant today – and is continually being re-written.
Was rabies present in the pre-colonial Americas? Did the Meso-American myth-
ological tales of the bat god, Camazotz serve an allegory to death and destruction,
potentially representing rabies virus transmission from vampire bats? (Figs. 1 and 2).
Rather curiously, facts such as when, where, and how rabies originated here are
simply unknown.
Truth be told, all surveillance is biased. History is skewed substantially by the
victorious, in a revisionist version of spolia opima simply on a grand scale along the
civilization, and colonization, exploitation themes. For the first several hundred
years after the fifteenth century colonization of the Americas, most of the apprecia-
tion for the new norm, such as various maladies, was penned by privileged white
male European colonists, including the clergy. Indigenous languages were sup-
pressed, and with them baseline oral recollections. The same fate befell written
vestiges and codices from prior civilizations in Mesoamerica and the Andes.
Monuments to the old were destroyed. Temples were razed, and new churches were
built over ancient foundations. Public non-converts, keepers of knowledge, and tra-
ditional healers were killed brutally. While major human communicable diseases of
the time, such as measles, smallpox, influenza, and tuberculosis, may have been
recorded by the New Order, other pathogens, particularly zoonoses, may have been
very much under appreciated.
As a fundamental disease of nature, such a base appreciation of the introduction
and perpetuation of rabies is somewhat akin to our conjecture over the detection and
characteristics of “the sound of very softly falling trees in poorly visited forests.”
Despite our hubris, speculation, and much-vaulted technical prowess, we are left
wanting, as COVID-19 so aptly demonstrated. Still, while recognizing such limita-
tions, we must celebrate our “facts” limited as they are, strive to improve upon our
re-interpretations of the past, and lastly should never ignore those platitudes to our
ancestors (as well as our deserved late contemporaries responsible for these collec-
tive fruits of our labors), to relish the here and now at this place and time – such is
the background for the anticipated – because rabies is the true king of zoonoses.
I would be remiss to fail on my Acknowledgments – it is not so simple to get a
project completed during a pandemic! Nevertheless, I was cheered that Springer
agreed to take on this concept, as well as to the anonymous reviewers that offered
xii Preface

Fig. 1 Depiction of the Mayan hero twins, Hunahpú and Xbalanqué, attacked by the giant “bat
god” Camazotz (also known as Zotzilaha Chimalman), in the Popol Vuh text. (In the House of
Bats, by William Sewell, in: L. Spence. The Myths of Mexico and Peru. Thomas J. Crowell
Company, New York, 1913)

early guidance for my draft outline. Gratitude extends to my editor, Alison Ball and
other staff, for their immense patience, waiting anew for the promised. I am incred-
ibly thankful to my many colleagues from throughout the globe (living or working
in this Hemisphere) for devoting their countless hours, creative energies, and expe-
rienced insights as co-authoring contributors, particularly those whose mother
tongue was not “American English.” Attesting to the intricacies of this topic, these
represented a diverse cadre of professionals, including anthropologists,
Preface xiii

Fig. 2 Terracotta figurine,

Zapotec, sixth–ninth
century, Oaxaca, Mexico,
thought to depict a bat god.
(https://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Bat_god-­ETHAM_
L000043-­IMG_2409-­
black.jpg, by Rama)

diagnosticians, economists, epidemiologists, historians, physicians, research scien-

tists, veterinarians, virologists, wildlife biologists, etc.
For the audience at large, I sincerely hope you may find something of relevance
in these interwoven themes of “host, agent, and environment” between the volumes
of this contribution. Lastly, but certainly not the least, my understated but heartfelt
devotedness to Nancy and “the kids,” for all of their collective love, patience and
support, tolerance for those countless hours during 2020–2022 that “der Opa” was
shuttered in his dark office cave, with his seemingly omnipresent “PLEASE-DO-­
NOT-DISTURB” sign up, readin’, ritin’, reviewin’, and editing these many drafts,
that would eventually became this final product.
Pax vobiscum.

Lawrenceville, GA, USA Charles E. Rupprecht

10 October 2022
Contents

1  World in Flux: The Columbian Exchange ����������������������������������������    1

A
Davide Domenici
2 Glimpses into the Past: New World Contributions
Towards Understanding the Basic Etiology, Pathobiology
and Treatment of Rabies ������������������������������������������������������������������������   15
Drishya Kurup, Charles E. Rupprecht, Stephen Scholand,
Catherine Yankowski, and Matthias Schnell
3 The Diversity, Evolution and Emergence of Rabies Virus
in the Americas����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   43
Edward C. Holmes and Erin H. Harvey
4 
The Ecological Range and Principles of Wildlife Rabies Virus
Perpetuation in the Americas������������������������������������������������������������������   61
Amy T. Gilbert
5 Historical Laboratory Contributions Supporting Rabies
Diagnosis and Disease Prevention and Control in the Americas ��������   77
Susan A. Nadin-Davis, Lillian A. Orciari, Elaine R. Fernandes,
and Pamela A. Yager
6 Historical Progression from Nerve Tissue-­Based
Rabies Vaccines to Recombinant Biologics for Humans
and Companion Animals ������������������������������������������������������������������������ 121
Hildegund C. J. Ertl
7 Wildlife Rabies Management in the New World:
Prevention, Control and Elimination in Mesocarnivores�������������������� 143
Richard B. Chipman, Amy T. Gilbert, and Dennis Slate
8 Management of Vampire Bats and Rabies:
Past, Present, and Future������������������������������������������������������������������������ 199
Tonie Rocke, Daniel Streicker, and Ariel Leon

xv
xvi Contents

9 Conflicting Perspectives on a Rabies Outbreak

in a Venezuelan Rainforest, 2007–2008�������������������������������������������������� 223
Charles L. Briggs
10 Rabies, Medicine, and Culture: Dogs, Disease,
and Urban Life in the United States, 1840–1920���������������������������������� 241
Jessica Wang
11 Historical Disparities in Health: Rabies Surveillance,
Risk Factors and Prevention ������������������������������������������������������������������ 261
Amira Roess, Kis Robertson, and Sergio Recuenco
12 The Health Economics of Rabies in the Americas:
An Historical Summary and a Synthesis of the Literature������������������ 281
S. A. Shwiff, K. H. Ernst, S. S. Shwiff, and V. R. Brown
13 Towards the Elimination of Canine Rabies
in the Americas: Governance of a Regional Program�������������������������� 293
Marco Antonio Natal Vigilato, Albino José Belotto,
Hugo Tamayo Silva, Felipe Rocha, Baldomero Molina-Flores,
Julio Cesar Augusto Pompei, Larissa Zanetti, and Ottorino Cosivi
14 Musing Over Non-technical Criticalities of Rabies
Prevention and Control �������������������������������������������������������������������������� 307
Victor J. Del Rio Vilas and Gilberto Montibeller

Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 317
Chapter 1
A World in Flux: The Columbian
Exchange

Davide Domenici

Abstract In a path-breaking volume published in 1972, Alfred Crosby coined the

expression the “Columbian Exchange” to refer to the global circulation of people,
animals, plants, and microbes initiated by the European “discovery” of America, an
historical phenomenon which shaped the modern world in a radical and unprece-
dented way. In this chapter, I review the impact the Columbian Exchange had in
food habits and health, two fields where the entanglement between biological and
cultural facts is of outmost relevance, as shown by the intimate relationship linking
epidemics, colonial violence, and demographic collapse. The Columbian Exchange,
inducing the global circulation of several animal species, also had a profound impact
on human-animal relationships. Given the relevance that European dogs had in the
spread of rabies in the Americas, in the last part of the chapter I summarize the
results of scholarly studies which explored the changing relationships between ani-
mals and humans in the post-colonial Americas.

Keywords Biogeography · Columbian exchange · Dogs · Globalization ·

Livestock · Non-indigenous species

Introduction

Decades after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the dread caused by the arrival of
peoples, animals and materials never seen before was still vividly inscribed within
Indigenous social memory. According to the Nahua interlocutors of the Franciscan
friar Bernardino de Sahagún:
…[the Spaniards] set off on their way to Mexico, coming gathered and bunched, raising
dust. Their iron lances and halberds seemed to sparkle, and their iron swords were curved

D. Domenici (*)
Department of History and Cultures, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 1

C. E. Rupprecht (ed.), History of Rabies in the Americas: From the Pre-Columbian
to the Present, Volume I, Fascinating Life Sciences,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25052-1_1
2 D. Domenici

like a stream of water. Their cuirasses and iron helmets seemed to make a clattering sound.
Some of them came wearing iron all over, turned into iron beings, gleaming, so that they
aroused great fear and were generally seen with fear and dread. Their dogs came in front,
coming ahead of them, keeping to the front, panting, with their spittle hanging down…1

Mesoamericans had never practiced iron metallurgy in pre-Colonial times, and their
dogs were very different from the large hounds that the Spanish conquistadors
employed in hunting and war. The strong sensorial emphasis of the Indigenous
account powerfully conveys the emotional effect of that momentous and frightful
encounter.
The dreadful appearance of iron weapons and war dogs in the lands of Central
Mexico was but a glimpse of a much wider phenomenon, that is, the unprecedented
global circulation of people, animals, plants and microbes initiated by the European
“discovery” of America, commonly known as the Columbian Exchange. This label
was coined by the historian Alfred Crosby with the publication of the famous vol-
ume, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 [2].
Other historians had studied related issues before, but the centrality that Crosby
accorded to the biological dimension in his historical essay had no precedents, so
that his work is today perceived as a forerunner of what is now called environmental
history. Similarly, the vast geographical scope of Crosby’s study, mostly centered
on the Atlantic world but also considering – albeit in a still limited fashion – Africa
and Asia, makes the Columbian Exchange a pioneering example of the now bur-
geoning field of global history.
Since Crosby’s path-breaking volume, many other studies – including a second
book by Crosby himself [3] – have greatly enriched our perception of the relevance
that the movements of plants, animals and germs had in shaping what we call the
modern world. As often stressed both in academic and popular writings, it is hard to
believe that before the European invasion of the Americas, say, Italians had never
heard of tomatoes or that no cattle had ever put hooves on the grasslands of the
Argentinian pampas. As shown by Crosby, the transformations induced by the
Columbian Exchange went far beyond the realm of food habits, since whole land-
scapes were changed dramatically by the introduction – either voluntary or involun-
tary – of new plants and animals, whose wider environmental impact has been so
vast that it is even difficult to perceive. Sheep flocks, for example, caused the dry-
ing-­up of vast areas of highland Central Mexico [4], while many areas with temper-
ate climates such as ample regions of North America, especially prone to be targeted
by settler colonialism, were literally invaded by European plants and animals to the
degree that – in Crosby’s words – they were transformed into veritable Neo-Europes
[3]. One of the saddest dimensions of the Columbian exchanges involved the spread
of pathogens: diseases as smallpox or measles crossed the Atlantic on European
ships and swept the American lands, contributing to the massive demographic
decline of Indigenous groups, while going in the opposite direction, syphilis made
sexual intercourse in Europe much less light-hearted than before [5]. Other infec-
tious diseases, such as rabies, whose precise presence in the New World before

1
Codex Florentinus, Book XII, Chap. 1. English translation of original Nahuatl text by James
Lockhart, in [1].
1 A World in Flux: The Columbian Exchange 3

colonization is uncertain, were strongly exacerbated by the introduction of European

rabid dogs and by abundant livestock, acting as it were a veritable feasting-place for
vampire bats [6].
It is not by chance that the all the above-mentioned examples have to do with those
spheres of human life – food, death and sex – which more than any other blur the divide
between biological and cultural phenomena. A nuanced understanding of the entangle-
ments between the biological and cultural dimensions of the Columbian Exchange is,
indeed, one of the most difficult results to attain. As the reader would have noticed, the
title of Crosby’s book mentioned both biological and cultural consequences. Despite
this equal pairing of the two terms in the title, it is clear that in his interpretation of the
Columbian Exchange, Crosby accorded primacy to biological phenomena, perceiving
cultural facts as mostly epiphenomenal reactions to unstoppable biological flows, whose
furious current could in no way be stopped or altered by social actors. Additionally, he
was very explicit in declaring his interests: at the very beginning of The Columbian
Exchange Crosby wrote that “…Man is a biological entity before he is a Roman Catholic
or a capitalist or anything else…” [2], a position later reiterated when, while discussing
the history of the Canary Islands, Crosby plainly stated to be “…more interested, say, in
the rabbit propagation than in manifestations of Our Lady of Candelaria…” [3]. As
already stated, the centrality accorded to biological and environmental phenomena was
the strength of Crosby’s approach, especially in a time when historians used to pay lim-
ited attention to them. For this reason, it would be unfair and anachronistic to accuse
Crosby of biological determinism, a criticism that, on the other hand, could be made
probably with more reason to some of Crosby’s epigons, such as Jared Diamond, author
of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs and Steel [7]. Now that almost half a century
has passed since the publication of Crosby’s book, we are in the position to examine the
problem with new eyes and to observe how these two dimensions were entangled inex-
tricably (Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1 Allegorical depiction by Johannes Stradanus of ‘first contact’, East meets West, with
Amerigo Vespucci awakening the ‘sleeping’ America, espousing dual biological and cultural
aspects. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerigo_Vespucci#/media/File:Stradanus_America.jpg)