OVIEDO, John Gonzales, in Spanish, Gonçalo Hernandez de Oviedo y Valdez, a celebrated historian, was born at Madrid about the year 1478, and educated amongst the pages of Ferdinand and Isabella. Oviedo had attained the age of fifteen when Christopher Columbus returned from his first voyage; and being seized with a strong desire to learn the details relating to the great discovery of the il-
lustrious navigator, he soon made himself acquainted with all that had passed in this wonderful expedition. Having embraced the profession of arms, he distinguished himself in the war of Naples, where he rendered important service to Spain; and it was in recompense of his talents and bravery that Ferdinand appointed him director of the gold and silver mines in the island of Haïti, which Columbus named first Española, and then San-Domingo. Oviedo proceeded to his destination in 1513; and employed in working the mines, which were poor compared with those afterwards discovered in the continent of America, the natives of the island, a good and gentle race, naturally indolent, and by no means robust, with constitutions already enfeebled by the ravages of syphilis, a disease previously unknown in the old world. This unfortunate people, who had received the companions of Columbus with so much cordiality, Oviedo treated worse than beasts of burden; compelling them to labour without intermission, and exercising the greatest cruelties to enforce submission to his commands on the part of a race which had previously lived in idleness, subsisting on the abundant natural productions of the climate, and on fish, which they caught without difficulty, as an amusement rather than an occupation. The abominable tyranny to which the natives were thus subjected soon caused a considerable diminution of their number; and Oviedo, in order to justify himself for the oppression and cruelty which he exercised, had the bad faith to allege, in his writings, that the Haïtians were dissolute, unprincipled, and in every respect deserving of extermination. Nor was this all. Not content with calumniating the people he had so cruelly treated, he added the ridiculous falsehood, that amongst them syphilis was the result of debauchery; whereas, according to the testimony of all impartial historians, it had been ascertained by Columbus that the Haïtian people were comparatively indifferent to sexual pleasure, a circumstance by no means common in a burning climate, and which can only be explained by the weak physical organization of these islanders, or by a deficiency of vital power. A residence of nearly twelve years in Haïti enabled Oviedo to study the natural history of the island in all its parts, to observe syphilis in all its types, and to ascertain the remedies which the natives employed in their treatment of the disease. The principal of these was the galac, which is still classed amongst the number of the antisymphitics. On his return to Spain in 1525, Oviedo published a journal of his researches under the title of Summario de la Historia General y Natural de las Indias Occidentales, Toledo, one vol. folio, dedicated to Charles V. At a later period, however, the author recast this production, to which he added numerous facts connected with the natural history of Haïti, and, in 1535, he published the first twenty books of his great work entitled La Historia General y Natural de las Indias Occidentales; but the entire work, which is divided into fifty books, did not appear till 1783, when it came out under the auspices of the Marquis of Truxillo. Oviedo affirms, in his narrative, that the syphilis is an endemic malady in the island of Haïti, and that having been contracted there by the Spaniards belonging to the expedition of Columbus, it was by them communicated to the Neapolitans belonging to the expedition of Gonçalvo de Cordova; and, in point of fact, the syphilis appeared at Naples immediately after the return of the squadron of Gonçalvo. Several writers, who pretend that syphilis existed in Europe anterior to the discovery of the new world, have attempted to prove this hypothetical assertion from the writings of Oviedo himself; but these, so far from countenancing any such notion, contain incontestable proof of the error into which those persons have fallen who ascribe the origin of this fearful scourge to the old continent. Some authors assure us that Oviedo, having been infected by syphilis during his sojourn at Naples
about the year 1513, came to the conclusion that it had been imported from Haïti; and conceiving that there must exist in that island a remedy for the disease, solicited the employment which led him thither, and in fact discovered that the wood of galac was the infallible antidote employed by the natives, and by which also he effected his own cure. It is added that, on his return to Spain, Oviedo commenced physician for syphilitic maladies, in the treatment of which he made use of the wood of galac, with a success which considerably augmented the fortune he had acquired in working the mines of Haïti, at the expense of the lives of a great number of the natives. (A.)