The anti-venereal trials at the Hospital General de San Andrés (Mexico City, 1790-1791)

An itinerant healer from Pátzcuaro brought a plant remedy for venereal disease to the archbishop of Mexico in July 1790, and instead of being dismissed or licensed on the spot he was given wards. Sixty-odd patients were treated to his instructions, in stages, with other medicines withheld, under the Protomedicato of New Spain — and a hospital physician who thought the whole thing a fraud wrote a long report saying so, which is why the trial's failures can still be read today.