LEPROSY IN AMERICA BEFORE THE ADVENT OF THE SPANIARDS AND THE NEGROES.

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Abstract
There seems to be some apparent authority for the existence of leprosy in Mexico and Peru, before the arrival of the Spaniards. Sahagan says:" It was the custom in ancient Mexico that once in eight years they danced around the statue of Tlaloc. The performers were masked as animals, birds, laborers and sick men." Among the diseases personated by the latter, syphilis and lepra are named. We find in the same author, a sentence of much more importance: "Those who have the disease of lepra generally lose their eyebrows and suffer great hunger. To cure them it will be necessary to give them a bath, two or three times, and when they come out of the bath, it will also be advisable to rub them with herbs and roots which have been first ground. Let them drink the water of a root calledtexputli; and if these remedies do no

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