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manuscript contained the following words: "There was black vomit which 

 began to occasion deaths among us in the year 1648", a statement which 

 immediately suggested the idea that among the Indian manuscripts of 

 Yucatan might be found the evidence that was wanted to prove that yellow 

 fever was not unknown to the American Indians before the discovery. 

 Accordingly, in the month of March of the present year, the matter was 

 submitted to the Rev. Bishop himself, acquainting him with the state of the 

 question and begging for information on the following points : — 



Whether, among the Maya documents that he had examined or in the 

 course of his other researches, any data had been met confirmatory of the 

 writer's own conjectures or throwing light on the subject of the epidemics 

 called cocolitzle which, according to Herrera (Decada IV., Lib. IX., Cap. 

 VI.), used to attack the Mexican Indians on the coast of New Spain before 

 the arrival of the Spaniards. 



In answer to this request, the Rev. Bishop, with great courtesy and 

 condescension, has written a most interesting and instructive letter, 

 containing a full discussion of the subject and valuable data not to be 

 found in our current literature. It is the substance and partial reproduction. 

 of this important communication that the present article is intended to 

 make known for the benefit of the readers of this journal. 



After proving, upon the best testimony, that Yucatan, until the year 

 1648, had been pronounced by all the Spanish writers a most salubrious 

 country, exempt from the disease that prevailed in other places, no epi- 

 demic of any kind having been observed in it from the commieneement of 

 the Spanish colonization in 1517 until 1648, the Rev. Bishop Carrillo 

 concludes that the disease called cocolitzle by the Mexicans, and which 

 prevailed annually at Vera Cruz before the Spanish invasion, did not 

 habitually manifest itself in Yucatan. Regarding that disease, he calls 

 attention to the circumstance that, from Herrera 's own account, it is easily 

 seen that a distinction was made by the Mexicans between the local endemic, 

 properly designated under the name of "cocolitzle", and a broader 

 application of the same term, qualified by some expletive such as ' ' general ' ' 

 or "universal" whenever it was used to designate other epidemic invasions 

 that extended over the whole country, as subsequently happened with 

 smallpox. The local endemic, the cocolitzle proper, existed at Vera Cruz, 

 "some years more violent than others;" and the reason why the Spaniards 

 found so large a population on that coast was that, on occasions when their 

 cocolitzle had been particularly severe, Montezuma used to send 8000 fami- 

 lies from the interior to repeople the coast exempting them from taxes 

 during a term of years and granting them other privileges. This "cocol- 

 itzle" may, therefore, have been yellow fever, but, at any rate, it did not 

 occur in Yucatan between the years 1517 and 1648. He next goes on to 

 prove that the epidemic of 1648, alluded to as "black vomit" in the Chum- 



