426 HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



cine publiflied in thefe lafl two hundred years. We 

 grant to him that they have no examples there of lux- 

 urious excefTes ; becaufe to him it appears too much to 

 confefs them to have been in Europe (q) ; and we grant 

 to him alto, that all the women of Europe have been 

 moft healthy and chafte. All that we grant to him, 

 though it is contradicted by hiftory, and the common 

 opinion of Europeans themfelves. Notwithftanding, we 

 affirm, that the French evil could be generated in Eu- 

 rope wirhout contagion ; becaufe all thofe diforders 

 which Aftruc fuppofes to belong to the ifland of Hifpa- 

 niola, could alfo take place in Europe, although they 

 never had been known there. Thofe chafle women in- 

 duced by violent paffions, which are common to all the 

 children of Adam, might become as incontinent and 

 abandoned as that author fuppofes the Americans ot 

 Hifpaniola were. Thofe found and healthy men might 

 find an aliment as pernicious as that which was the food 

 of the natives of Haiti. The human fperm, which of it- 

 felf is very acrid, as Aflruc fays, might, by reafon of un- 

 wholefome food, become more and more fo, until it had 

 that degree of acrimony, which produces the venereal 

 ailment. The menfes might become virulent, either from 

 fuppreffion, or plethora, or many other caufes in the 

 fluids or the velfels. It appears from the letters of Chri- 

 ftopher Columbus, quoted by his learned fon D. Ferdi- 

 nand, that he landed the firft time in Hifpaniola, on the 

 24th of December, 1492, becaufe a vefTelofhis refera- 

 ble fleer had (truck upon a fand bank ; that all the time 

 he remained there from the 24th of December to the 



4th 



(q) Sed efto: dermis in Europa venerem jeque impuram, atque in Hifpaniola 

 exerceri ; neque enim contra pugnare placet, quanquam ea tarn en nimia vide- 

 antur. AJlruc De Morbis Venereis, lib. I. cap. 12. 



