Pests, or epidemies, are spoken of by various authors as depopulating the country before and after the conquest. We know nothing of the symptoms of the visitations before the conquest. However, to this day, independent of the indigenous intermittent fevers in the some localities, there are bad bilious fevers on the Pacific coast, and yellow fevers running into black vomit on the Atlantic, particularly about Vera Cruz.
These intermittent, bilious, and yellow fevers are traced in a northerly direction along the coast of Texas into the Southern States of North America. I took the yellow fever at New Orleans, for which large doses of calomel were given. In Texas for intermittent fever, I took quinine in pretty large quantities and was bled ; but to get rid of this last fever I had to seek a change of climate.
Texas.-In 1840-2 I explored a great portion of this country. On the coast, in the Autumn, the bilious would rapidly change into yellow fever, carrying off its victims. A hundred miles or more in the interior I have personally experienced bad intermittent fevers, but farther westward, and where the land is more elevated, the country is healthy. Indians of the interior going to the coast easily catch the fever.
B. de Bourboug (ii. vol. of his His. du Mexique, 596) says, " about 1464, Mayapan, in Yucatan, was destroyed by civil wars. After a period of great abundance came a famine, when multitudes of animals died and putrified; this was succeeded by a peste or epidemic, which commenced the depopulation of the peninsula of Yucatan. And in vol. iii, p, 497, he speaks of Tlalocan, a sort of terrestrial paradise for those who had died by lightning, or drowned, the lepers, the sy-philitics, the itchy, gouty, etc. The warriors who had died on the field of battle were taken up amongst the stars." As to the list of diseases, they are, I conceive, of Spanish origin, and not Indian.
New Granada.-What Ulloa wrote years since, applies in a great measure to the present time. The climate, particularly of the coast, is very hot with much rain. The complexion of the people is livid, and the young are mostly affected by disease.
The first disease is called Chapetonada (in allusion to the name of Chapeton given to the old Spaniards) and fatal to very many Europeans ; the attack lasts three or four days, when the patient rallies or dies ; this is the local yellow fever, and when in its most malignant state is the black vomit.
The residents are subject to leprosy, which is by some attributed to eating large quantities of pork. Lepers are allowed to marry, and in this way the disease is perpetuated. They are confined within certain limits, but allowed to go out begging.
The itch and tetters (a cutaneous disease) are common ; an earth called maqumaqi is used as a remedy. There is a singular disease called cobrilla, or little snake, it is a tumour of a bad sort. Spasms and convulsions are common, and ofttimes fatal.
At Porto Bello in particular, foreigners fall victims to the climate. It was a common opinion that parturition at Porto Bello was so dangerous among the European women that they generally died in childbed ; so that when three or four months in pregnancy they were sent to Panama. European animals were so much affected by the climate that they scarcely bred. This Porto Bello has been and is still the hot bed of epidemics and mortal distempers with black vomit of a bad sort, and which made great havoc on one occasion, in 1726, to a British fleet.
Quito. -- Malignant spotted fevers and pleurisies are common in this country, and when they present themselves, say in the capital, generally sweep away large numbers, indeed they are pestilential contagions. The mal de vicho was considered by Jussieu as gangrene of the rectum and not uncommon ; those who laboured under flux were most liable to the malady. There is no canine madness in the city of Quito.
The people of this country are subject to a distemper unknown in Europe, and may be compared to the small-pox (?) which few or none escape; it is called peste, its symptoms are convulsions, a continual endeavour to bite, delirium, vomiting of blood and is ofttimes fatal. This peste is not peculiar to Quito, but has been observed in other parts of South America. At Guayaquil, the principal port, during the winter months, there is much intermittent fever, yellow fever occasionally. The natives are subject to diseases of the eye and cataract. The Indians very much dread the visitation of the European smallpox, which comes about every seven or eight years, when it makes very great havoc. The)7 have also mal delbicho, or, as called by them, sickness of the valleys. Tabardillo, or spotted fever, they have also, and cure in a very rough manner. Of late, hooping-cough or Tos de perro, dog's-cough, and measles of a bad sort, imported I conceive, have afflicted the Indians in this region, as well as in the north of Peru.
Indians of the mountains in going to the coast catch tercianas, or intermittent fevers; those of the coast who go to the high lands, suffer from cold and get inflammation of the lungs.
Velasco, in his Historia de Quito (iii, 66), alludes to the epidemics or pestes. There was one that visited nearly the whole of South America about the end of 1589. It commenced at Carthagena, travelling south to Quito ; in the capital 30,000 died out of 80,000. It is of this that Helps (Spanish C'onq. in America, iv, p. 84) adverts to and quotes Lozano, His. of Paraguay. The epidemic was first noticed in Carthagena in 1588, and it passed over all South America to the Straits of Magellan. It was much more fatal to the natives than the Spaniards. The Indian children were so struck down by the epidemic that not one out of a hundred escaped with life. The Indians offered no mental resistance to the ravages of this disease, which seems to have resembled the diphtheria of modern times. In Lozano's words : " Cerrabanseles las fauces de manera, que ni daban passo de lo interior al aliento, feneciendo la miserable vida entre las con-gojas del ahogo." Their throats became closed up, and in such a manner that no sustenance could pass, thus ending their miserable lives in the horrors of choking.
In 1645 Quito was visited by another peste called alformbrilla (St. Anthony's fire ?) and garotilla (quinsey) : 11,000 died of it in the city of Quito. Again, in 1759, there was another; of this Velasco, the historian, suffered. It was a sudden and violent fever, and severe head-ache, with the paleness of death, and great prostration; about one in a thousand of the Spaniards died of those who could obtain medical assistance, but 10,000 of the Indians who lived in the city perished. There was a fourth in 1785, a complication of diseases, including smallpox ; in five months from 20 to 25,000 died of it in the city of Quito and its vicinity.
In 1560 Potosi was visited by a peste, many dying after only twenty-four hours illness. It appeared again the following year. In 1684 there were great droughts and a deadly plague in Peru. Ulloa ii, p. 91 94, Voyages to South America, has some curious observations on the " distempers " of Lima, which cannot in any way be congenial to health or the maintenance of a vigorous population even of the whites, to say nothing of some of the mixed breeds. The distempers most common to Lima are malignant, intermittent, and ca-tarrhous fevers, pleurisies and constipations ; and these rage continually in the city. The visitation of the small-pox in Quito as well as here is not annual, though when it prevails great numbers are swept off. Convulsions are common (unknown in Quito, but known in Carthagena) of the partial, malignant and arched, of which he gives a fearful account. Cancer in the womb is most common, most painful, very contagious, and almost incurable. Slow or hectic fevers are common in this country and likewise contagious.
Chile.-This is probably one of the best climates in America. However, the capital, situated at 1540 feet above the level of the sea, and under the great Andes, would be called by us rather severe, for in summer it is very hot during the day, and cold at night. It is subject to a malady known there as chavalongo, which is a putrid typhus fever, being very often fatal. It appears after the first autumnal rains and is caused by miasma. Tisis, or calentura, is not uncommon; when attacking the young it is called consumption, and older people, decline.
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W.M. Bollaert, 1864
