The letter of D. Pasqual Angeles de los Reyes (Mexico, 22 November 1772): an Indian town officer criticising the first medical periodical of the Americas, and the editor's own note that he suspects a hoax

Six pages of the Mercurio volante of 1772 carry a letter signed by an Indian described as a cacique - a village schoolmaster, notary, alcalde, gobernador and fiscal who bought the paper in Mexico City and had his student son post him each sheet - going through its numbers one by one. He answers the paper's own excuse for American ignorance and defends the herbs of indigenous medicine. The editor printed it, then printed below the signature that he suspected a hoax.