Elasticsearch works but doesn't respond to certain APIs

Elasticsearch is searched and I can verify that

curl -XGET 'localhost:9200'

      

        
        
        
      

    

which gives me an answer like

{
  "status" : 200,
  "name" : "Bethany Cabe",
  "cluster_name" : "elasticsearch",
  "version" : {
    "number" : "1.4.2",
    "build_hash" : "927caff6f05403e936c20bf4529f144f0c89fd8c",
    "build_timestamp" : "2014-12-16T14:11:12Z",
    "build_snapshot" : false,
    "lucene_version" : "4.10.2"
  },
  "tagline" : "You Know, for Search"
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

It's all fine, but when I do

curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200/_cat/health?v'

      

        
        
        
      

    

no answer. the curl just gets stuck until I have to force close it. I've also tested with other API testing tools like RESTClient for Firefox.

The weird thing is that elasticsearch is responsive to some methods but not others. Can you help me?