I am just finishing up the Conquest on New Spain.

In it Diaz del Castillo mentions many soldiers who suffered or died from a "swelling of the groin" and for the life of me I don't know what that could be.

Could that have been syphilis? The symptoms don't seem right for that.

Also a lot died from "pleurisy" and I assume the high altitude had something to do with that? Or was that an old term for something else