# Possible cause for this Peruvian malady 1846.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possible-cause-for-this-peruvian-malady-1846/576623>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 31, 2011, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possible-cause-for-this-peruvian-malady-1846/576623 "2011-03-31T13:14:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possible-cause-for-this-peruvian-malady-1846/576623/1 "2011-03-31T13:14:50Z")

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In [Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35731). No. CCCLXX. August, 1846. Vol. LX. a traveler to Peru encounters a malady that is from drinking water. Any idea what this may have been.

> [@](#):
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> Whilst riding, through the vale of Surco, or through some other of the valleys leading from the coast to the mountains, he perceives a fountain by the road side, and pauses to refresh his tired mule. Scarcely is his intention manifest, when he is startled by a cry from his guide, or from a passing Indian—“Cuidado! Es agua de verruga!” In these valleys reigns a terrible disease called the verrugas, attributed by the natives to the water of certain springs, and for which all Dr Tschudi’s investigations were insufficient to discover another cause. Fever, pains in the bones, and loss of blood from cutaneous eruptions, are the leading symptoms of this malady, which is frequently of long duration, and sometimes terminates fatally. It seizes the Indians and lighter castes in preference to the white men and negroes, and no specific has yet been discovered for its cure. Mules and horses are also subject to its attacks.

Cuidado! Es agua de verruga! translates to Beware! Wart is water! with an online service. Any Spanish speaker with a better translation should post it.

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**Author:** ![Antigen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/848f3c/32.png) [@Antigen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antigen)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possible-cause-for-this-peruvian-malady-1846/576623/2 "2011-03-31T13:30:46Z")

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A search on “Verrugas Disease” got me to this [Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verruga_peruana).

It’s [Oroya fever](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oroya_fever), probably.

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**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possible-cause-for-this-peruvian-malady-1846/576623/3 "2011-03-31T13:46:29Z")

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> [@Harmonious\_Discord](#):
>
> Cuidado! Es agua de verruga! translates to Beware! Wart is water! with an online service. Any Spanish speaker with a better translation should post it.

A better translation would be "Careful! It’s “wart water.”

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**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possible-cause-for-this-peruvian-malady-1846/576623/4 "2011-03-31T14:34:46Z")

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Thanks for finding it.

This is nasty looking when you search pictures for it. It looks a lot like boils filled with red blood at first, only it bulges out much further like a spherical bubble of blood. The older stuff is bluish black and raised like a gigantic wart that keeps having the top get torn off.

Thankfully there is treatment with antibiotics. It wasn’t identified until 60 years after the article.