The written epidemic record of Spanish America, and what modern science reads from it

Almanacs, diaries, cabildo minutes, parish burial books and hospital and cemetery ledgers kept across Spanish America are the reason a 2014 study could assemble 22 typhus epidemics in central Mexico between 1655 and 1918 and set them against tree-ring drought, and a 2024 review could follow a plague along the road between Buenos Aires and Lima month by month. The same researchers say plainly what the record cannot do.