660 THE HISPANIC AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 



dead men. . . besides, they are treated inhumanly and are not 

 given the necessaries of life, but are killed with hunger and thirst. If 

 he were to tell in detail the evil that is done to them, it would fill many 

 pages. 140 



The Indians, however, were not the only victims of the cold, for 

 the sudden changes of climate, and exposure to wind and rain 

 worked great hardship among all on board, and was the cause of 

 much sickness and death. The treatment of the sick was shame- 

 fully neglectful. Gemelli Careri relates the callousness of the 

 captain of his galleon, whose personal profits from the single trip 

 were, according to his own estimate, 25,000 or 30,000 pieces of 

 eight : 



. . . Abundance of poor sailors fell sick, being exposed to the con- 

 tinual rains, cold, and other hardships of the season; yet they were not 

 allow'd to taste of the good bisket, rice, fowls, Spanish bread and 

 sweetmeats put into the custody of the master by the king's order, to 

 be distributed among the sick; for the honest master spent all at his 

 own table. 141 



But the worst danger was from disease. For three centuries 

 European navigators in the New World were afflicted with the 

 scourge of scurvy and beri-beri, especially the former. It was 

 Captain James Cook, the Englishman, who first proved the use 

 of lime juice as an anti-scorbutic, and thus removed one of the 

 greatest hindrances to exploration and maritime commerce. The 

 Spanish navigators paid especially heavy toll to these diseases, 

 the cause of which was lack of fresh provisions, or food containing 

 vitamines. Again we turn to Gemelli Careri for a description of 

 these perils: 



. . . There are two dangerous diseases in this voyage, more es- 

 pecially as they draw near the coast of America; one is the aforesaid 

 Berben [beri-beri], which swells the body, and makes the patient die 

 talking: The other is call'd the Dutch disease, which makes all the 

 mouth sore, putrifies the gums and makes the teeth drop out. The 



14e Los Rios, op. cit., in Blair and Robertson, XVIII. 300. 

 141 Gemelli Careri, op. cit., in Churchill, IV. 464. 



