156 On the Aborigines of Brazil, 



contains salt, and which consists in hairs growing out of 

 wounds. 



I have also observed a kind of athrax, and of painful boil 

 among these Indians.* 



Febrile diseases, 

 I pass to the consideration of febrile diseases. Among 

 them, I must first name the acute exanthemata, small-pox 

 and measles, for they are among the worst plagues of Brazil. 

 To them, to syphilis, and to excess in the use of brandy, is 

 the great mortality of the red man to be ascribed. 



Small-pox, 

 According to all accounts, this disease was entirely un- 

 known to the inhabitants of Brazil before the arrival of the 

 Portuguese. But now it has penetrated into the deepest 

 wilds with fearful celerity and the most calamitous results, 

 and every tribe knows and fears this disease as the most 

 deadly poison to its blood. In the Tupi language, it is call- 

 ed Mereba-ayba, i. e. the bad disease. Unfortunately it must 

 be told, that the European settlers in many districts, for 

 instance in the interior of the provinces of Maranhao and 

 Pernambuco, have with fiendish cunning contributed to bring 

 the plague among the Indians, and thereby devote a harm- 

 less population to the most frightful death. Where the 

 Indians have attacked the settlements of the Portuguese 

 with the purpose of robbery, plunder or murder, there the 

 colonists have hung up in the woods shirts and other 

 pieces of clothing poisoned with small-pox, and fearfully 

 realized the fable of Nessus. The Indian is, by his con- 

 stitution, ill formed for the development of small-pox. The 

 eruption of the exanthema is slow and difficult. Racked 

 with violent headache, and burnt up with heat, the Indian 

 usually rolls himself up in his hammock, and strives carefully 



* This account of cutaneous diseases is not very complete : we are much in 

 want of a distinct history of those prevailing among the natives of India. — TV. 



