Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/529

503 SPANISH COLONIAL POLICT. 503 Whatever be the amount of physical good or chapter evil, immediately resulting to Spain from her new '- — J. ., , , . , Moral con- cliscoveries, their moral consequences were inesti- sequences or ■* the (liscov- mable. The ancient limits of human thought and ^"^'" action were overleaped ; the veil which had covered the secrets of the deep for so many centuries was removed ; another hemisphere was thrown open ; and a boundless expansion promised to science, from the infinite varieties in which nature was ex- hibited in these unexplored regions. The success friend, Dr. Walter Channing. In this work, the author has assem- bled all the early notices of the dis- ease of any authority, and discuss- ed their import with great integrity and judgment. The following po- sitions may be considered as estab- lished by his researches. I. That neither Columbus nor his son, in their copious narratives and corre- spondence, allude in any way to the existence of such a disease in the New World. I must add, that an examination of the original docu- ments published by Navarrete since the date of Dr. Thiene's work, fully confirms this statement. 2. That among the frequent notices of the disease, during the twenty-five years immediately following the discovery of America, there is not a single intimation of its having been brought from that country ; but, on the contrary, a uniform derivation of it from some other source, gen- erally France. 3. That the disor- der was known and circumstantial- ly described previous to the expe- dition of Charles VIII., and of course could not have been intro- duced by the Spaniards in that way, as vulgarly supposed. 4. That various contemporary authors trace its existence in a variety of coun- tries, as far back as 1493, and the beginning of 1494, showing a rapid- ity and extent of diffusion perfectly irreconcilable with its importation by Columbus in 1493. 5. Last- ly, that it was not till after the close of Ferdinand and Isabella's reigns, that the first work appeared affecting to trace the origin of the disease to America ; and this, pub- lished 1517, was the production not of a Spaniard, but a foreigner. A letter of Peter Martyr to the learned Portuguese Arias Barbosa, professor of Greek at Salamanca, noticing the symptoms of the dis- ease in the most unequivocal man- ner, will settle at once this much vexed question, if we can rely on the genuineness of the date, the 5th of April, 1488, about five years before the return of Columbus. Dr. Thiene, however, rejects the date as apocryphal, on the ground, 1. That the name of " morbus Gal- licus," given to the disease by Martyr, was not in use till after the French invasion, in 1494. 2. That the superscription of Greek profes- sor at Salamanca was premature, as no such professorship existed there till 1508. As to the first of these objections, it may be remarked, that there is but one author prior to the French invasion, who notices the disease at Vv-