New research suggests colonization might not have been the reason for the deadly epidemics in Mexico in 1545 and 1576:
… The revisionists draw support from one of the only authoritative firsthand accounts of the epidemics, a text lost for hundreds of years until it was found, misfiled, in a Spanish archive.
Dr. Francisco Hernandez, a physician to the Spanish king who witnessed the epidemic of 1576 and conducted autopsies, describes a fever that caused heavy bleeding, similar to the hemorrhagic
Ebola virus. It raced through the Indian population, killing four out of five people infected, often within a day or two.“Blood flowed from the ears and in many cases blood truly gushed from the nose,” he wrote. “Of those with recurring disease, almost none was saved.”
Harvard-trained epidemiologist Dr. Rodolfo Acuna-Soto, a microbiology professor at Mexico’s National Autonomous University, had Hernandez’ work translated from the original Latin in 2000. He followed up with research into outbreaks in Mexico’s isolated central highlands, where indigenous rats may have spread the disease through urine and droppings.
Acuna-Soto’s theory ? which has been published in several scientific journals, including Emerging Infectious Diseases and the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene ? runs counter to the belief that most of Mexico’s Indian population died of Spanish-imported diseases such as smallpox, to which their bodies had no immunity.
“This wasn’t smallpox,” Acuna-Soto says. “The pathology just does not fit.”
He says some historians in Mexico are offended by his theory.
“Much of the reason why these epidemics were left unstudied was that it was politically and institutionally easier to blame the Spaniards for all of the horrible things that might have happened,” he said. “It was the official version of history.” …
