412 



modorra'' which had been recorded, under similar circumstances, at Santo 

 Domingo and at Darien, during the first twenty-five years after the 

 discovery. 3 ) If this connection be accepted, the unavoidable inference 

 must be that, since the American Indians have no natural immunity 

 aginst yellow fever and that disease had never been known among 

 Europeans before coming to America, there must have existed, before the 

 discovery, endemic foci of yellow fever on this side of the Atlantic offering 

 climatic conditions suited to the development of the yellpw fever mosquito 

 and enabling that insect to perform its functions as transmitter of the 

 disease. As may be gathered from the contemporary chronicles of Las 

 Casas, Oviedo and Herrera, such endemic foci did exist in the Island of 

 Santo Domingo (Hispaniola) and on the coasts of Venezuela (Nueva An- 

 dalucía) and Columbia (Castilla de Oro) ever since settlements were made 

 in those piaces by newly-arrived Spaniards. As a rule, the disease broke 

 out in its full force during the sxunmer months and, after a lull during 

 the cooler season, it would break out again the following summer, until all 

 the new-comers, having once suffered an attack remained thereafter proof 

 against that illiness. 



The most significant statement which I have been, able to find in order 

 to connect pre-Columbian epidemics suffered by the aborigines with those 

 which subsequently attacked the Spanish invaders, occurs in the Chronicles 

 of Herrera, 4 ) which he published in 1599, eighty years after the conquest 

 of Mexico.. In chapter 6 he explains "how it happens that the country of 

 Vera Cruz and that northen coast is so sickly * * * from April till 

 September, at which time those who go out in the sun to attend to their 

 business are taken sick * * * * while in the months from November till 

 March, the weather is cold * * * * and, the earth being then dry, the 

 country becomes as healthy as it is in Mexico (City), and those who arrive 

 at that time are safe not to suffer." Chapter 8 is beaded: "About the 

 cocolitzle sickness, and wherefor the northern coast of New Spain is so 

 scantily peopled," and it opens thus: "It has already been stated that the 

 city of Vera Cruz and all the northern cost is sickly, ovving to its hot 

 climate which makes the illnesses more deadly * * * aud children can not 

 be reared in it because any disorder gives them fever; this is why the 

 population there is so scanty. If in Montezuma's time its population was 

 so numerous, notwithstanding that the same general diseases (epidemics), 

 called "cocolitzle" prevailed, and in some years more than in others, as 

 happens now, that was due to the fact that Montezuma, in view of the 

 mortality and scarcity of inhabitants in that part of the country, used to 

 collect from Mexico and other parts, where the population was numerous, 

 eight thousand families * * * and sent them to the places where the 



3) "Epidemiología primitiva de la fiebre amarilla," in La Crónica Médico-Qui- 

 rúrgica de la Habana. May 15, 1897. 



4) Chronicles of Herrera, 1599, Chaps. 6 and S, Book 9, 4th Decade. 



