During this year, 1230, when King Don Jayme seized on the island of Mallorca, a frightful and lethal pestilence prevailed not only among the poor and wretched, but also among the higher orders; in the course of only one month, several nobles and individuals of the first families of Aragon and Catalonia died. The desolation which this dire pestilence caused was such that it almost depopulated the island, and forced the king to send galleys to Catalonia in search of colonists, he having given an order to Don Pedro Cornel for 100,000 reals to bring from Aragon 150 gentry,--caballeros or nobles. This pestilence increased with another no less fatal disease, viz., ‘the Sacred Persian or St. Anthony’s fire;’ so that this great monarch, anxious for the safety of his people, established in the island, by his mandate of 13th September of the same year, the hospital of St. Anthony for the reception and treatment of all suffering from so terrible a malady, as appears in the history of the kingdom of Mallorca written by the chronicler or historian Don Vincente Mut. In imitation of this establishment, and of that founded in Castro Xerez in 1214, other hospitals were erected for the same purposes in Madrid, Saragossa, and in various other provinces of the kingdom. Twenty-three years after, another hospital, called after St. Lazarus, was established in the city of Seville, similar to that which was built in the city of Valencia in the year 1067. The Annals of Seville, written by Zurita and Don Alonso Melgado, state that this hospital was founded by King Alonso the Wise. About this time, 1230, Denmark, Italy, and Gaul were visited by a severe epidemic pestilence, as also were various other parts of Europe; it continued until 1236.