HISTORY OF YELLOW FEVER 123 



disease may be mentioned Oviedo, who in his " Historia 

 General de las Indias " describes the great mortality 

 among the followers of Columbus in 1494. This mor- 

 tality he attributes to the humidity of St. Domingo, 

 but in every probability it was yellow fever. So 

 bad were the reports wliich reached Spain, that 

 Ferdinand Y. had to send out 300 convicts to the 

 island as tliere were no volunteers. 



Columbus in 1498, in writing to the King of Spain 

 upon the sickness of his men, attributed their illness 

 to " peculiarities in the air and water " in the new land. 

 No doubt the peculiarity was the mosquito. 



In the sixteenth century yellow fever is said to have 

 decimated the Mexicans. But the first authentic 

 history of an epidemic of yellow fever was furnished by 

 Jean Terreyra de Rosa at Olinda in Brazil in the year 

 1687. 



^^J'ere Dutertre, 1635, appears to have been the first 

 to furnish details of the symptoms and progress of the 

 disease in the West Indies. He regarded it as a new 

 disease. 



Pere Labat, whose name is well known in connec- 

 tion with yellow fever, found on landing in Martinique 

 in the year 1649, the disease raging in the island, the 

 monks of the religious order stationed there being 

 severely afflicted. The learned father stated that the 

 disease was called " the Maladie de Siam," because 

 in Martinique they supposed that it was imported from 

 Siam by the ship Oriflamme. As, however, this ship 

 called at Brazilian ports on the voyage, it is much more 

 probable that either the crew became infected there 



