Note 27 — Chapter XX

Concepción’s account of this occurrence (Hist. de Philipinas, vii, pp. 258, 259) contains an explanation somewhat remarkable for a period when sanitary science had made little progress, even in Europe.

“Governor Don Manuel de Leon was sick from excessive corpulency; and Don Juan de Sarra treated him by making cruel cuts in the flesh of his body. He attended, when these incisions were not yet quite healed, the funeral of Doña Maria del Cuellar, the deceased wife of Auditor Don Francisco Coloma; and in the church the vapors which exhale from buried corpses—which, experience proves, cost those so dear, who enter the church with sores or wounds, as these are poisoned and corrupted by those vapors—had the effect on the governor of opening his wounds, and bringing on a hemorrhage which exhausted him, [and he died. April 11, 1667].”