1045. Robert Southey to Henry Herbert Southey, 7 March 1805 ⁠* 

I have not Oviedos History, – but this passage occurs in his Relacion sumaria de la Historia Natural de las Indias. – Cap. 77. [1] 

The chapter treats of the Guayacon [2]  or Holy Wood as the Spaniards calls it, & mentions it as the remedy used in the Islands [3]  for the disease. – ‘Your majesty (the treatise is addressed to Carlos 5. [4] ) may be certain that the disease came from the Indies. it is very common among the Indians but not so dangerous in those parts as in these; indeed the Indians in the islands cure it easily with this wood, & on the main land with other herbs, or things with which they are acquainted; for they are great Herbalists. (he has said that the Guayacon does not grow on the continent to his knowledge) – The first time that the disease was ever seen in Spain was after the Admiral D Christoval Colon discovered the Indies & returned to these parts. some Xtians who had been with him upon that discovery, & those who were in his second voyage who were more, brought back the plague, & from them others were infected. [5]  And afterwards in the year 1495. when the Great Captain D Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordova passed over to Italy with troops in favour of the King of Naples D Fernando the young, against K Charles of France, he of the large head, by order of the Catholic King D Fernando & Doña Isabel, of immortal memory, the grandsires of your Majesty, this disease went with some of his soldiers, & this was the first time it had been seen in Italy. [6]  And as it was that time the French were there with the said K Charles, the Italians called this evil the French evil, & the French called it the evil of Naples, because they also had never seen it till that war, – & from thence it has spread thro all Xtendom, & past into Africa, by means of some men & women infected with it, for in no other manner does it spread so much, as by the connection of man & woman, as has often been seen. & also by eating from the sauce, or drinking from the dish or cup which the disease have used, & still more by sleeping in the sheets & linen wherein the diseased have lain. It is so so sore & dolorous an evil, that no man who has eyes must have seen many persons rotten, & turned away from Saint Lazarus’s [7]  on account of it, & many of xxx xxx many have died of it. Few of the Xtians who connect themselves with the female Indians escape – but as I have said it is not so perilous – there as here – as well because this tree being fresh is more profitable & operates better, as because the temperature of the earth is without cold, & helps the diseas such diseased persons better than the air & constellations here.’

Oviedos larger work was written before this, but not published. [8]  You will most likely find both the passage from it as well as this, in the History of Medicine. You have here the whole of this, literally rendered.

I remember a story in a miscellaneous book of Elizabeths time [9]  made up from Spanish and Italian writers – so that from whence it originally came heaven knows – but it is certainly older than her time, to this effect. That two persons (Spaniards I believe) being grievously diseased determined to go among the Indians to be cured, & accordingly to the Islands they went & cured they were, chiefly by eating lizards. The folly of the remedy does not impugn the main import of the fact – that they believed the Indians had more knowledge of the disease than the Europeans.

If a man 250 years hence were to argue that the French Revolution existed an indefinite time before we now suppose it to have broken out, because we read of mobs in London, & sedition every where, – he would argue just like those who deny the American origin of Venereal disease – the facts that it was notoriously called either French or Neapolitan, & that it was common in the Islands, where Oviedo had lived, are decisive. It is not a thing to be claimed for his countrymen by any vanity. The single cases which seem to have occurred at an earlier period you can better account for than I. how far the description of cancers, scrofulous swellings & ulcers &c may explain them.

____

And thus, Sir, have I replied to your Presidentships [10]  letter immediately upon receiving it.

We have been alarmed about the child – have blistered behind her ears, & administered calomel. [11]  the symptoms have completely disappeared – but not so my uneasiness. If the disease should decidedly manifest itself, I shall bleed her in the jugular vein, by which King has saved three children. she seems well at present.

I had news from Tom on the 11^th of Feb^y when he wrote he had been on board the Amelia a month, in which time they had buried 60. [12]  he was well, & in good spirits.

You will sooner know when Madoc is published than I shall. My directions concerning copies have been sent to Longman some time, who will I suppose instruct Constable [13]  to supply you according to my desire. – I have been twice at Grasmere for some days with poor Wordsworth whose heart is almost broken by the loss of his brother in the Abergavenny. [14]  I fear too he loses much of his own little property, but of this he is not able to think of or feel.

God bless you

RS.

Thursday. March 7. 1805.