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SELECTED ARTICLES. 
contagiousness of the Mai de San Lazaro, it does not appear 
likely that Velasco would have unnecessarily exposed himself 
to the danger of taking it by personally visiting and watching 
the lay -brother in so advanced a stage of that loathsome dis- 
order during the progress of his treatment. I do not here, 
however, mean to accuse Padre Velasco of intentional ex- 
aggeration of the case; but I conceive the probability to be that, 
as he knew the lay-brother to have been suffering severely 
from that disease, as he had seen the medicine that was adminis- 
tered to him, and as he found him afterwards improved in 
health, he gave ready faith to the story which the Indian 
chose to tell him, who would naturally desire to make the 
cure appear a marvellous one; and under that belief, while 
afterwards recording the event with the praiseworthy inten- 
tion of ultimately making the virtues of that plant known to 
the world, he may have thought himself justified in saying 
that he had witnessed " all" the circumstances he mentions. 
It may notwithstanding be remarked that, if so extraordi- 
nary a cure as the above had really been effected, it could 
scarcely have passed unnoticed in Cuenca, a city that contain- 
ed at that period, besides a college of Jesuits (in which the 
patient probably resided), four convents of friars, two nunne- 
ries, and about twenty-five thousand inhabitants. The Jesuits 
were then, 1754, in the plenitude of their power; and one can 
see no motive for their suppressing on that occasion all men- 
tion of so powerful a remedy, as in that case it ought to have 
been considered, but a thousand for their at once divulging it, 
which, from their extensive connections, they had ample 
means of doing. 
I revert, however, to my narrative. It happened in No- 
vember, 1833, that a French gentleman settled in Maracaybo, 
Monsieur Jean Batiste Marcucci, who had been acquainted 
with Jacopo Puche's diseased state for some years, from hav- 
ing frequent occasion to pass his door, heard of his amend- 
ment, and was thereby prompted to visit him. Surprised at 
the great improvement he perceived in the Lazar's condition, 
and not knowing, as it appears, that Senor Casanova was then 
