A.D. 1555, the summer was hot, and heavy rains fell: febrile diseases became very prevalent in England and France, and continued with redoubled violence during the succeeding summer, which was also excessively hot and dry: excessive commotions of the elements and severe seasons marked this period. The city of Valencia suffered from epidemic variola. Don Miguel Juan Pasqual, an eminent physician, makes mention of this pestilence in his work ‘De Febre Pestilenti.’ About this period, according to Cardinal Gastaldi, when the Emperor Charles V. invaded the French territories, pestilence destroyed great numbers of the peasantry and of the Spanish soldiery. A.D. 1556, a whole province of the mountainous part of China was in a moment absorbed into the earth; all the towns with their inhabitants were buried in the ruins, and an immense lake of water took its place, which remains to this day. A comet was seen this year. Vienna about this time suffered from epidemic pestilence, as also did Holland the year following; the disease continued until 1558. This disease commenced in the form of influenza in various parts of Europe, and in France, Italy, and Germany; Spain also suffered from its violence, which was greater in some countries than in others, viz. Florence and Tuscany. In France, malignant dysentery was the most predominant malady; agues in Holland, and petechial or spotted fever in Spain; the last-named disease was as fatal as the true plague. A Spanish writer, Andres Laguna, physician to Charles V., Philip II., and Julius III., wrote a work on this pestilence, (as did many other eminent physicians,) entitled, ‘Discurso breve sobre la Cura y Preservacion de la Pestilentia.’ In going minutely into the symptoms described by these authors, we recognize all the symptoms of bilious remittent or yellow fever, synocha, &c., as prevalent now-a-days, and termed ‘Andalusian fever.’ A.D. 1557. A new infirmity, as it was then considered to be, broke out this year in Spain, which nearly depopulated the peninsula: it continued with great destruction until 1570. This new pestilence was supposed to have originated with the Saracens, after the war of Granada, that is, after King Don Fernando de Aragon, and Doña Isabel, Queen of Castile, had conquered the city of Granada. That this disease originated with the Spanish Arabs, was known from the fact that all their disbanded soldiery communicated the disease to the inhabitants of the cities and towns, as Luis de Torro relates in his work entitled ‘De Febre Puncticulari,’ &c., to which type this pestilence belonged.