EARTHWORKS ON THE BIG HARPETH RIVER. 69 



liis book ' ile Ahditis nonnullis ac mirandis viorliontm, et fMnatlonum canfii'^,' tells 

 us that the lues venerea, then beginning in Spain, had spread itself through Italy 

 and France, and that in the year 1496 it had possessed many people in all the 

 provinces of Europe. Dodon?eus likewise tells us that this disease very much 

 raged in the war that Charles VIII, King of France, had with Alphonsus, King 

 of Naples, in the year 1494; and yet thinks that Guliclmus de Saliceto, who lived 

 in 1270, Valeseus de Tarenta, who lived hi 1418, and Bernavdus de Gordonio, who 

 died in 1305, give us an account of some symptoms of it. I am of opinion, not- 

 withstanding what these have said, and some other less material passages in 

 ancient works, and what Joannes ab Ardcrne wrote about an. 1360, and likewise 

 what Stow says about the laws of the public stews in Southwark, that this was a 

 distemper altogether new in Europe, Africa, and Asia, before it was brought from 

 the West India Islands. The diseases mentioned by the above-cited authors being 

 different from that distemper, both in symptoms and cure, only, perhaps, commu- 

 nicated somewhat after the same manner. I have seen some such cases attended 

 with considerable inconveniences and fevers, and yet not at all pocky." London, 

 1 70 7. — Introduction. 



Sir Hans Sloane Avas physician to the Duke of Albemarle, and in 1687 visited 

 Jamaica, where he remained eighteen years; his testimony, therefore, is entitled 

 to the highest consideration. 



The historian William Robertson, who appears to have examined the question 

 of the origin of this disease with his usual care and learning, held that it originated 

 in the West Indies. Thus, in his " History of America," he says : " One 

 dreadful malady, the severest scourge with which in tliis life offended HeaVen 

 chastens the indulgence of criminal desire, seems to have been peculiar to 

 the Americans. By communicating it to their conquerors they have not only 

 amply avenged their wrongs, but by adding this calamity to those which formerly 

 embittered human life, they have, perhaps, more than counterbalanced all the 

 benefits which Europe has derived from the discovery of the New World. This 

 distemper, from the country in which it first raged, or from the people by whom 

 it was supposed to have been spread over Europe, has been sometimes called the 

 Neapolitan and sometimes the French disease. At its first appearance the infection 

 was so malignant, its symptoms so violent, its operation so rapid and fatal, as to 

 baffle all the efforts of medical skill. Astonishment and terror accompanied this 

 iniknown affliction in its progress, and men began to dread the extinction of the 

 human race by such a cruel visitation. Experience and the ingenuity of physicians 

 gradually discovered remedies of such virtue as to cure or mitigate the evil. During 

 the course of two centuries and a half its virulence seems to have abated con- 

 siderably. At length, in the same manner as the leprosy, which raged in Europe 

 for some centuries, it may waste its force and disappear ; and in some happier age 

 this western infliction, like that from the east, may be known only by description." 

 Vol. ii, p. 85. In note xxiii to the same volume Robertson adds : " The rapid 

 communication of the disease from Spain over Europe seems, however, to resemble 

 the progress of an epidemic rather than a disease transmitted by infection. The 

 first mention of it is in 1493, and before the year 1497 it had made its appearance 



