The Spanish Doctor: his Social Position--Medical
Abuses--Hospitals--Medical Education--Lunatic Asylums--Foundling
Hospital of Seville--Medical Pretensions--Dissection--Family
Physician--Consultations--Medical
Costume--Prescriptions--Druggists--Snake Broth--Salve for
Knife-cuts.
The transition from the Spanish _ventero_ to the _ladron_ was easy, nor
is that from the robbers to the doctors of Spain difficult; the former
at least offer a polite alternative, they demand “your money or your
life,” while the latter in most cases take both; yet these able
practitioners, from being less picturesque in costume, and more
undramatic in operations, do not enjoy so brilliant a European
reputation as the bandits. Again, while our critical monitors cry
thieves on every road of the Peninsula, no friendly warning is given
against the _Sangrado_, whose aspect is more deadly than the _coup de
soleil_ of a Castilian sun: woe waits the wayfarer who falls into his
hands; the patient cannot be too quick in ordering the measure to be
taken of his coffin, or, as Spaniards say, of his tombstone, which last
article is shadowed out by the first feeling of the invalid’s
pulse--_tomar el pulso, es prognosticar al enfermo la loza_. It was
probably from a knowledge of this contingent remainder, that Monsieur
Orfila went, or was sent, from Paris to Madrid, about the time of the
Montpensier marriage with the _Infanta_, in the hopes of rescuing her
elder and reigning sister, the “innocent” Isabel, from the fatal native
lancets--a well-meant interference of the foreigner, by the way, which
the Spanish faculty resented and rejected to a man; nor were the guarded
suggestions of this eminent _toxicologiste_, or investigator of poisons,
with regard to the administration of medicines and dispensaries,
received so thankfully as they deserved.
[Sidenote: THE SPANISH DOCTOR.]
However magnificently endowed in former times were the hospitals and
almshouses of Spain, the provision now made for poor and ailing
humanity is very inadequate. The revenues were first embezzled by the
managers, and since have almost been swept away. Trustees for pious and
charitable uses are defenceless against armed avarice and appropriation
in office; and being _corporate_ bodies, they want the sacredness of
_private_ interests, which every one is anxious to defend. Hence the
greedy minion Godoy began the spoliation, by seizing the funds, and
giving in lieu government securities, which of course turned out to be
worthless. Then ensued the French invasion, and the confiscation of
military despots. Civil war has done the rest; and now that the convents
are suppressed, the deficiency is more evident, for in the remoter
country districts the monks bestowed relief to the poor, and provided
medicines for the sick. With few exceptions, the hospitals, the _Casas
de Misericordia_, or houses for the destitute, are far from being well
conducted in Spain, while those destined for lunatics, and for exposed
children, notwithstanding recent improvements, do little credit to
science and humanity.
[Sidenote: HIS SOCIAL POSITION.]
The base, brutal, and bloody _Sangrados_ of Spain have long been the
butts of foreign and domestic novelists, who spoke many a true word in
their jests. The common expression of the people in regard to the busy
mortality of their patients, is, that they die like bugs, _mueren como
chinches_. This recklessness of life, this inattention to human
suffering, and backwardness in curative science, is very Oriental; for,
however science may have set westward from the East, the arts of
medicine and surgery have not. There, as in Spain, they have long been
subordinate, and the professors held to be of a low caste--a fatal bar
in the Peninsula, where the point of personal honour is so nice, and men
will die rather than submit to conventional degradations. The surgeon of
the Spanish Moors was frequently a despised and detested Jew, which
would create a traditionary loathing of the calling. The physician was
of somewhat a higher caste; but he, like the botanist and chemist, was
rather to be met with among the Infidels than the Christians. Thus
Sancho the Fat was obliged to go in person to Cordova in search of good
advice. And still in Spain, as in the East, all whose profession is to
put living creatures to death, are socially almost excommunicated; the
butcher, bullfighter, and public executioner for example. Here the
soldier who sabres, takes the highest rank, and he who cures, the
lowest; here the M.D.’s, whom the infallible Pope consults and the
autocrat king obeys, are admitted only into the _sick_ rooms of good
company, which, when in rude health, shuts on them the door of their
saloons; but the excluded take their revenge on those who morally cut
them, and all Spaniards are very dangerous with the knife, and more
particularly if surgeons. Madrid is indeed the court of death, and the
necrology of the Escorial furnishes the surest evidence of this fact in
the premature decease of royalty, which may be expected to have the best
advice and aid, both medical and theologico-therapeutical, that the
capital can afford; but brief is the royal span, especially in the case
of females and _infantes_, and the _result_ is undeniable in these
statistics of death; the cause lies between the climate and the doctor,
who, as they aid the other, may fairly be left to settle the question of
relative excellence between each other.
[Sidenote: THE SPANISH DOCTOR.]
The Spanish medical man is shunned, not only from ancient prejudices,
and because he is dangerous like a rattle-snake, but from jealousies
that churchmen entertain against a rival profession, which, if well
received, might come in for some share of the legacies and
power-conferring secrets, which are obtained easily at deathbeds, when
mind and body are deprived of strength. Again, a Spanish surgeon and a
Spanish confessor take different views of a patient; one only wishes, or
ought to wish, to preserve him in this world, the other in the
next,--neither probably in their hearts having much opinion of the
remedies adopted by each other: the spiritual practice changes not, for
novelty itself, a heresy in religion, is not favourably beheld in
anything else. Thus the universities, governed by ecclesiastics,
persuaded the poor bigot Philip III. to pass a law prohibiting the study
of any _new_ system of medicine, and _requiring_ Galen, Hippocrates, and
Avicenna. Dons and men for whom the sun still continued to stand still,
scouted the exact sciences and experimental philosophy as dangerous
innovations, which, they said, made every medical man a Tiberius, who,
because he was fond of mathematics where strict demonstration is
necessary, was rather negligent in his religious respect for the gods
and goddesses of the Pantheon; and so, in 1830, they scared the timid
Ferdinand VII. (whose resemblance to Tiberius had nothing to do with
Euclid) by telling him that the schools of medicine created
materialists, heretics, citizen-kings, chartists, barricadoers, and
revolutionists. Thereupon the beloved monarch shut up the lecture rooms
forthwith, opening, it is true, by way of compensation, a tauromachian
university;--men indeed might be mangled, but bulls were to be
mercifully put out of their misery, secundum artem, and with the honours
of science.
[Sidenote: MEDICAL PRACTICE.]
This low social position is very classical: the physicians of Rome,
chiefly _liberti_, freed slaves, were only made citizens by Cæsar, who
wished to _conciliate_ these ministers of the fatal sisters when the
capital was wanting in population after extreme emigrations--an act of
favour which may cut two ways; thus Adrian VI. (tutor to the Spanish
Charles V.) approved of there being 500 medical practitioners in the
Eternal City, because otherwise “the _multitude_ of living beings would
eat each other up.” However, when his turn came to be diminished, the
grateful people serenaded his surgeon, as the “deliverer of the
country.” In our days, there was only one medical man admitted by the
Seville _sangre su_, the best or noblest set (whose blood is held to be
blue, of which more anon) when in rude and antiphlebotomical health; and
every stranger was informed apologetically by the exclusive Amphitryons
that the M.D. was _de casa conocida_, or born of a good family; thus his
social introduction was owing to personal, not professional
qualifications. And while adventurers of every kind are betitled, the
most prodigal dispenser of Spanish honours never dreams of making his
doctor even a _titulado_, a rank somewhat higher than a pair de France,
and lower than a medical baronetage in England. This aristocratical ban
has confined doctors much to each other’s society, which, as they never
take each other’s physic, is neither unpleasant nor dangerous. At
Seville the medical _tertulia_, club or meeting, was appropriately held
at the apothecary’s shop of _Campelos_, and a sable _junta_ or
consultation it was, of birds of bad omen, who croaked over the general
health with which the city was afflicted, praying, like Sangrado in ‘Gil
Blas,’ that by the blessing of Providence much sickness might speedily
ensue. The crowded or deserted state of this rookery was the surest
evidence of the hygeian condition of the fair capital of Bætica, and one
which, when we lived there, we have often anxiously inspected; for,
whatever be the pleasantries of those in insolent health, when sickness
brings in the doctor, all joking is at an end; then he is made much of
even in Spain, from a choice of evils, and for fear of the confessor and
undertaker.
The poor in no countries have much predilection for the hospital; and in
Spain, in addition to pride, which everywhere keeps many silly sick out
of admirably-conducted asylums, here a well-grounded fear deters the
patient, who prefers to die a _natural_ death. Again, from their being
poor, the necessity of their living at all, is less evident to the
managers than to the sufferers; as, say the Malthusians, there is no
place vacant at Nature’s _table d’hôte_ to those who cannot pay, so bed
and board are not pressed on Spanish applicants, by the hospital
committee; an admitted patient’s death saves trouble and expense,
neither of which are popular in a land where cash is scarce, and a love
for hard work not prevalent, where a sound man is worth little, and a
sick one still less; nor is every doctor always popular for working
cures, as could be exemplified in sundry cases of Spanish wives and
heirs in general; therefore in the hospitals of the Peninsula, if only
half die, it is thought great luck: the dead, moreover, tell no tales,
and the living sing praises for their miraculous escape. _El medico
lleva la plata, pero Dios es que sana!_--God works the cure, the doctor
sacks the fee! Meanwhile the sextons are busy and merry, as those in
Hamlet, and as indeed all gravediggers are, when they have a job on hand
that will be paid for; deeply do they dig into the silent earth, that
bourn from whence no travellers return to blab. They sing and jest,
while dust is heaped on dust, and the _corpus delicti_ covered, and with
it the blunders of the _medico_; thus all parties, the deceased
excepted, are well satisfied; the man with the lancet is content that
disagreeable evidence should be put out of sight, the fellow-labourer
with the spade is thankful that constant means of living should be
afforded to him; and when the funeral is over, both carry out the
proverbial practice of Peninsular survivors: _Los muertos en la huesa, y
los vivos á la mesa_, the dead in their grave, the quick to their
dinner.
[Sidenote: MEDICAL ABUSES.]
But at no period were Spaniards careful even of their own lives, and
much less of those of others, being a people of untender bowels.
Familiarity with pain blunts much of the finer feelings of persons
employed even in our hospitals, for those who live by the dead have only
an undertaker’s sympathy for the living, and are as dull to the poetry
of innocent health, as Mr. Giblet is to a sportive house-fed lamb.
Matters are not improved in Spain, where the wounds, blood, and
slaughterings of the pastime bull-fight, the _mueran_ or death
mob-cries, and _pasele por las armas_, the shoot him on the spot, the
Draco and Durango decrees, and practices of all in power, educate all
sexes to indifference to blood; thus the fatal knife-stab or surgeon’s
cut are viewed as _cosas de España_ and things of course. The philosophy
of the general indifference to life in Spain, which almost amounts to
Oriental fatalism, in the number of executions and general resignation
to bloodshed, arises partly from life among the many being at best but a
struggle for existence; thus in setting it in the cast, the player only
stakes coppers, and when one is removed, there is somewhat less
difficulty for survivors; hence every one is for himself and for to-day;
après moi le déluge, _el ultimo mono se ahoga_, the last monkey is
drowned, or as we say, the devil takes the hindmost.
[Sidenote: MEDICAL ABUSES.]
The neglect of well-supported, well-regulated hospitals, has recoiled on
the Spaniards. The rising profession are deprived of the advantages of
_walking_ them, and thus beholding every nice difficulty solved by
experienced masters. Recently some efforts have been made in large
towns, especially on the coasts, to introduce reforms and foreign
ameliorations; but official jobbing and ignorant routine are still among
the diseases that are _not_ cured in Spain. In 1811, when the English
army was at Cadiz, a physician, named Villarino, urged by some of our
indignant surgeons, brought the disgraceful condition of Spanish
hospitals before the Cortes. A commission was appointed, and their sad
report, still extant, details how the funds, food, wine, &c., destined
for the patients were consumed by the managers and their subalterns. The
results were such as might be expected; the authorities held together,
and persecuted Villarino as a _revolucionario_, or reformer, and
succeeded in disgracing him. The superintendent of this establishment
was the notorious Lozano de Torres, who starved the English army after
Talavera, and was “a thief and a liar,” in the words of the Duke. The
Regency, after this very exposure of his hospital, promoted him to the
civil government of Old Castile; and Ferdinand VII., in 1817, made him
Minister of Justice.
As buildings, the hospitals are generally very large; but the space is
as thinly tenanted as the unpeopled wastes of Spain. In England wards
are wanting for patients--in Spain, patients for wards. The names of
some of the greatest hospitals are happily chosen; that of Seville, for
instance, is called _La Sangre_, the blood, or _Las Cinco Llagas_, the
five bleeding wounds of our Saviour, which are sculptured over the
portal like bunches of grapes. Blood is an ominous name for this house
and home of _Sangrado_, where the lancet, like the Spanish knife, gives
no quarter. In instruments of life and death, this establishment
resembled a Spanish arsenal, being wanting in everything at the critical
moment; its dispensary, as in the shop of Shakspere’s apothecary,
presented a beggarly account of empty pill-boxes, while as to a visiting
Brodie, the part of that Hamlet was left out. The grand hospital at
Madrid is called _el general_, the General, and the medical assistance
is akin to the military co-operation of such Spanish generals as Lapeña
and Venegas, who in the moment of need left Graham at Barrosa, and the
Duke at Talavera, without a shadow of aid. There is nothing new in this,
if the old proverb tells truth, _socorros de España, o tarde o nunca_;
Spanish succours arrive late or never. In cases of battle, war, and
sudden death as in peace, the professional men, military or medical, are
apt to assist in the meaning of the French word _assister_, which
signifies to be present without taking any part in what is going on. And
this applies, where knocks on the head are concerned, not to the medical
men only, but to the universal Spanish nation; when any one is stabbed
in the streets, he will infallibly bleed to death, unless the
authorities arrive in time to pick him up, and to bind up his wounds:
every one else--Englishmen excepted, we describe things
witnessed--passes on the other side; not from any fear at the sight of
blood, nor abhorrence of murder, but from the dread which every Spaniard
feels at the very idea of getting entangled in the meshes of _La
Justicia_, whose ministers lay hold of all who interfere or are near the
body as principals or witnesses, and Spanish justice, if once it gets a
man into its fangs, never lets him go until drained of his last
farthing.
[Sidenote: COLLEGE OF SAN CARLOS.]
The schools and hospitals, especially in the inland remote cities, are
very deficient in all improved mechanical appliances and modern
discoveries, and the few which are to be met with are mostly of French
and second-rate manufacture. It is much the same with their medical
treatises and technical works; all is a copy, and a bad one; it has been
found to be much easier to translate and borrow, than to invent;
therefore, as in modern art and literature, there is little originality
in Spanish medicine. It is chiefly a veneering of other men’s ideas, or
an adaptation of ancient and Moorish science. Most of their terms of
medicinal art, as well as of drugs, _jalea_, _elixir_, _jarave_, _rob_,
_sorbete_, _julepe_, &c., are purely Arabic, and indicate the sources
from whence the knowledge was obtained, for there is no surer historical
test than language of the origin from whence the knowledge of the
science was derived with its phraseology; and whenever Spaniards depart
from the daring ways of their ancestors, it is to adopt a timid French
system. The few additions to their medical libraries are translations
from their neighbours, just as the scanty materia medica in their
apothecaries’ shops is rendered more dangerous and ineffective by quack
nostrums from Paris. It is a serious misfortune to sanative science in
the Peninsula, that all that is known of the works of thoughtful,
careful Germany, of practical, decided England, is passed through the
unfair, inaccurate alembic of French translation; thus the original
becomes doubly deteriorated, and the sacred cosmopolitan cause of truth
and fact is too often sacrificed to the Gallic mania of suppressing
both, for the honour of their own country. Can it be wondered,
therefore, that the acquaintance of the Spanish faculty with modern
works, inventions, and operations is very limited, or that their
text-books and authorities should too often be still Galen, Celsus,
Hippocrates, and Boerhaave? The names of Hunter, Harvey, and Astley
Cooper, are scarcely more known among their M.D.’s than the last
discoveries of Herschel; the light of such distant planets has not had
time to arrive.
[Sidenote: LUNATIC ASYLUMS.]
To this day the _Colegio de San Carlos_, or the College of Surgeons at
Madrid, relies much on teaching the obstetric art by means of wax
preparations; but learning a trade on paper is not confined in Spain to
medical students; the great naval school at Seville is dedicated to San
Telmo, who, uniting in himself the attributes of the ancient Castor and
Pollux, appears in storms at the mast-head in the form of lights to
rescue seamen. Hence, whenever it comes on to blow, the pious crews of
Spanish crafts fall on their knees, and depend on this marine Hercules,
instead of taking in sail, and putting the helm up. Our tars, who love
the sea _propter se_, for better for worse, having no San Telmo to help
them in foul weather (although the somewhat irreverent gunner of the
Victory did call him of Trafalgar Saint Nelson), go to work and perform
the miracle themselves--_aide toi, et le ciel t’aidera_. In our time,
the middies in this college were taught navigation in a room, from a
small model of a three-decker placed on a large table; and thus at least
they were not exposed to sea-sickness. The Infant Antonio, Lord High
Admiral of Spain, was walking in the Retiro gardens near the pond, when
it was proposed to cross in a boat; he declined, saying, “Since I sailed
from Naples to Spain I have never ventured on water.” But, in this and
some other matters, things are managed differently on the Thames and the
Bætis. Thus, near Greenwich Hospital, a floating frigate, large as life,
is the school of young chips of old blocks, who every day behold in the
veterans of Cape St. Vincent and Trafalgar living examples of having
“done their duty.” The evidence of former victories thus becomes a
guarantee for the realization of their young hopes, and the future is
assured by the past.
[Sidenote: LUNATIC ASYLUMS.]
Next to the barracks, prisons, arsenals, and fortresses of Spain, the
establishments for suffering mortality are the least worth seeing, and
are the most to be avoided by wise travellers, who can indulge in much
better specimens at home. This assertion will be better understood by a
sketch or two taken on the spot a few years ago. The so-called asylums
for lunatics are termed in Spanish hospitales de _locos_, a word derived
from the Arabic, _locao_, mad; they, like the cognate Morostans (μωρος)
of Cairo, were generally so mismanaged, that the directors appeared to
be only desirous of obtaining admission themselves. Insanity seemed to
derange both the intellects of the patients and to harden the bowels of
their attendants, while the usual misappropriation of the scanty funds
produced a truly reckless, makeshift, wretched result. There was no
attempt at _classification_, which indeed is no thing of Spain. The
inmates were crowded together,--the monomaniac, the insane, the raving
mad,--in one confusion of dirt and misery, where they howled at each
other, chained like wild beasts, and were treated even worse than
criminals, for the passions of the most outrageous were infuriated by
the savage lash. There was not even a curtain to conceal the sad
necessities of these human beings, then reduced to animals: everything
was public even unto death, whose last groan was mingled with the
frantic laugh of the surviving spectators. In some rare cases the bodies
of those whose minds are a void, were confined in solitary cells, with
no other companions save affliction. Of these, many, when first sent
there by friends and relations to be put out of the way, were _not_ mad,
soon indeed to become so, as solitude, sorrow, and the iron entered
their brain. These establishments, which the natives ought to hide in
shame, were usually among the first lions which they forced on the
stranger, and especially on the Englishman, since, holding our worthy
countrymen to be all _locos_, they naturally imagined that they would be
quite at home among the inmates.
They, in common with many others on the Continent, entertain a notion
that all Britons bold have a bee in their bonnet; they think so on many,
and perhaps not always unreasonable, grounds. They see them preferring
English ways, sayings, and doings, to their own, which of itself appears
to a Spaniard, as to a Frenchman, to be downright insanity. Then our
countrymen tell the truth in bulletins, use towels, and remove
superfluous hairs daily. And letting alone other minor exhibitions of
eccentricity, are not the natives of England, Scotland, and Ireland
guilty of three actions, any one of which would qualify for Bedlam if
the Lord Chancellor were to issue a writ _de lunatico inquiriendo_?--have
they not bled for Spain, in purse and person, on the battlefield, on the
railroad, in the Stock Exchange?--
“Oh tribus Antyceris caput insanabile!”
[Sidenote: FOUNDLING HOSPITALS.]
To return, however, to Spanish madmen and their hospitals, the sight was
a sad one, and alike disgraceful to the sane, and degrading to the
insane native. The wild maniacs implored a “loan” from the foreigner,
for from their own countrymen they had received a stone. A sort of
madness is indeed seldom wanting to the frantic energy and intense
eagerness of all Spanish mendicants; and here, albeit the reasoning
faculties were gone, the national propensity to beg and borrow survived
the wreck of intellect, and in fact it was and is the indestructible
“common sense” of the country.
There was generally some particular patient whose aggravated misery made
him or her the especial object of cruel curiosity. Thus, at Toledo, in
1843, the _keepers_ (fit wild beast term) always conducted strangers to
the cage or den of the wife of a celebrated Captain-General and
first-rate fusilier of Catalonia, an officer superior in power to our
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. She was permitted to wallow in naked filth,
and be made a public show. The Moors, at least, do not confine their
harmless female maniacs, who wander naked through the streets, while the
men are honoured as saints, whose minds are supposed to be wandering in
heaven. The old Iberian doctors, according to Pliny, professed to cure
madness with the herb _vettonica_, and hydrophobia with decoction of the
_cynorrhodon_ or dog-rose-water, as being doubly unpalateable to the
rabid canine species. The modern Spaniards seemed only to desire, by
ignorance and ill-usage, to darken any lucid interval into one raving
uniformity.
The foundling hospitals were, when we last examined them, scarcely
better managed than the lunatic asylums; they are called _casas de
espositos_, houses of the exposed--or _la Cuna_, the cradle, as if they
were the cradle, not the coffin, of miserable infants. Most large cities
in Spain have one of these receptacles; the principal being in the
Levitical towns, and the natural fruit of a rich celibate clergy, both
regular and secular. The _Cuna_ in our time might have been defined as a
place where innocents were massacred, and natural children deserted by
their unnatural parents were provided for by being slowly starved. These
hospitals were first founded at Milan in 787, by a priest named Datheus.
That of Seville, which we will describe, was established by the clergy
of the cathedral, and was managed by twelve directors, six lay and six
clerical; few, however, attended or contributed save in subjects. The
hospital is situate in the _Calle de la Cuna_; near an aperture left for
charitable donations, is a marble tablet with this verse from the
Psalms, inscribed in Latin, “When my father and mother forsake me, then
the Lord will take me in.”
[Sidenote: FOUNDLING HOSPITAL AT SEVILLE.]
A wicket door is pierced in the wall, which opens on being tapped to
admit the sinless children of sin; and a nurse sits up at night to
receive those exposed by parents who hide their guilt in darkness.
“Toi que l’amour fit par un crime,
Et que l’amour défait par un crime à son tour,
Funeste ouvrage de l’amour,
De l’amour funeste victime.”
Some of the babies are already dying, and are put in here in order to
avoid the expense of a funeral; others are almost naked, while a few are
well supplied with linen and necessaries. These latter are the offspring
of the better classes, by whom a temporary concealment is desired. With
such the most affecting letters are left, praying the nurses to take
more than usual care of a child which will surely be one day reclaimed,
and a mark or ornament is usually fastened to the infant, in order that
it may be identified hereafter, if called for, and such were the precise
customs in antiquity. Every particular regarding every exposed babe is
registered in a book, which is a sad record of human crime and remorse.
Those children which are afterwards reclaimed, pay about sixpence for
every day during which the hospital has maintained them; but little
attention is paid to the appeals for particular care, or to the promise
of redemption, for Spaniards seldom trust each other. Unless some name
is sent with it, the child is baptized with one given by the matron, and
it usually is that of the saint of the day of its admission. The number
was very great, and increased with increasing poverty, while the funds
destined to support the charges decreased from the same cause. There is
a certain and great influx nine months after the Holy week and
Christmas, when the whole city, male and female, pass the night in
kneeling to relics and images, &c.; accordingly nine months afterwards,
in January and November, the daily numbers often exceed the usual
average by fifteen to twenty.
[Sidenote: FOUNDLING HOSPITAL AT SEVILLE.]
There is always a supply of wet nurses at the _Cuna_, but they are
generally such as from bad character cannot obtain situations in private
families; the usual allotment was three children to one nurse.
Sometimes, when a respectable woman is looking out for a place as
wet-nurse, and is anxious not to lose her breast of milk, she goes, in
the meanwhile, to the _Cuna_, when the poor child who draws it off
plumps up a little, and then, when the supply is withdrawn, withers and
dies. The appointed nurses dole out their milk, not according to the
wants of the infants, but to make it do for their number. Some few are
farmed out to poor mothers who have lost their own babe; they receive
about eight shillings a month, and these are the children which have the
best chance of surviving, for no woman who has been a mother, and has
given suck, will willingly, when left alone, let an infant die. The
nurses of the _Cuna_ were familiar with starvation, and even if their
milk of human kindness were not dried up or soured, they have not the
means of satisfying their hungry number. The proportion who died was
frightful; it was indeed an organized system of infanticide. Death is a
mercy to the child, and a saving to the establishment; a grown-up man’s
life never was worth much in Spain, much less that of a deserted baby.
The exposure of children to immediate death by the Greeks and Romans,
was a trifle less cruel than the protracted dying in these Spanish
charnel-houses. This _Cuna_, when last we visited it, was managed by an
inferior priest, who, a true Spanish unjust steward, misapplied the
funds. He became rich, like Gil Blas’s overseer at Valladolid, by taking
care of the property of the poor and fatherless; his well-garnished
quarters and portly self were in strange contrast with the condition of
his wasted charges. Of these, the sick and dying were separated from the
healthy; the former were placed in a large room, once the saloon of
state, whose gilded roof and fair proportions mocked the present misery.
The infants were laid in rows on dirty mattresses along on the floor,
and were left unheeded and unattended. Their large heads, shrivelled
necks, hollow eyes, and wax wan figures, were shadowed with coming
death. Called into existence by no wish or fault of their own, their
brief span was run out ere begun, while their mother was far away
exclaiming, “When I have sufficiently wept for his birth, I will weep
for his death.”
[Sidenote: FOUNDLING HOSPITAL AT SEVILLE.]
Those who were more healthy lay paired in cradles arranged along a vast
room; but famine was in their cheeks, need starved in their eyes, and
their shrill cry pained the ear on passing the threshold; from their
being underfed, they were restless and ever moaning. Their existence has
indeed begun with a sob, with _El primer sollozo de la Cuna_, the first
sigh of the cradle, as Rioja says, but all cry when entering the world,
while many leave it with smiles. Some, the newly exposed, just parted
from their mother’s breast, having sucked their last farewell, looked
plump and rosy; they slept soundly, blind to the future, and happily
unconscious of their fate.
About one in twelve survived to idle about the hospital, ill clad, ill
fed, and worse taught. The boys were destined for the army, the girls
for domestic service, nay, for worse, if public report did not wrong
their guardian priest. They grew up to be selfish and unaffectionate;
having never known what kindness was, their young hearts closed ere they
opened; “the world was not their friend, nor the world’s law.” It was on
their heads that the barber learned to shave, and on them were visited
the sins of their parents; having had none to care for them, none to
love, they revenged themselves by hating mankind. Their occupation
consisted in speculating on who their parents may be, and whether they
should some day be reclaimed and become rich. A few occasionally are
adopted by benevolent and childless persons, who, visiting the _Cuna_,
take a fancy to an interesting infant; but the child is liable ever
after to be given up to its parents, should they reclaim it. Townshend
mentions an Oriental custom at Barcelona, where the girls when
marriageable were paraded in procession through the streets, and any
desirous of taking a wife was at liberty to select his object by
“throwing his handkerchief.” This Spanish custom still prevails at
Naples.
Such was the _Cuna_ of Seville when we last beheld it. It is now, as we
have recently heard with much pleasure, admirably conducted, having been
taken in charge by some benevolent ladies, who here as elsewhere are the
best nurses and guardians of man in his first or second infancy, not to
say of every intermediate stage.
[Sidenote: MEDICAL PRETENSIONS.]
Our readers will concur in deeming that wight unfortunate who falls ill
in Spain, as, whatever be his original complaint, it is too often
followed by secondary and worse symptoms, in the shape of the native
doctor; and if the judgment passed by Spaniards on that member of
society be true, Esculapius cannot save the invalid from the crows; the
faculty even at Madrid are little in advance of their provincial
colleagues, nay, often they are more destructive, since, being
practitioners in the only court, the heaven on earth, they are in
proportion superior to the medical men of the rest of the world, of whom
of course they can learn nothing. They are, however, at least a century
behind their brother professors of England. An unreasonable idea of
self-excellence arises both in nations and in individuals, from having
no knowledge of the relative merits of others, and from having few
grounds or materials whereon to raise comparison; it exists therefore
the strongest among the most uninformed and those who mix the least in
the world. Thus in spite of manifold deficiencies, some of which will be
detailed, the self-esteem of these medical men exceeds, if possible,
that of the military; both have killed their “ten thousands.” They hold
themselves to be the first _sabreurs_, physicians, and surgeons on
earth, and the best qualified to wield the shears of the Parcæ. It would
be a waste of time to try to dispel this fatal delusion; the
well-intentioned monitor would simply be set down as malevolent,
envious, and an ass; for they think their ignorance the perfection of
human skill. Few foreigners can ever hope to succeed among them, nor can
any native who may have studied abroad, easily introduce a better
system: his elder brethren would make common cause against him as an
innovator; he would be summoned to no consultations, the most lucrative
branch of practice, while the confessors would poison the ears of the
women (who govern the men) with cautions against the danger to their
souls, of having their bodies cured by a Jew, a heretic, or a foreigner,
for the terms are almost convertible.
[Sidenote: MEDICAL EDUCATION.]
Meanwhile, as in courts of justice and other matters in Spain, all
sounds admirably on _paper_--the forms, regulations, and system are
perfect in theory. Colleges of physicians and surgeons superintend the
science, the professors are members of infinite learned societies,
lectures are delivered, examinations are conducted, and certificates
duly signed and sealed, are given. The young _Galenista_ is furnished
with a licence to kill, but what is wanting from beginning to end, to
practitioner and patient, is _life_. The medical men know, nevertheless,
every aphorism of the ancients by rote, and _discourse_ as eloquently
and plausibly on any case as do their ministers in Cortes. Both write
capital theories and opinions extemporaneously. Their splendid language
supplies words which seem to have cost thought. What is deficient is
that clinical and best of education where the case is brought before the
student with the corollary of skilful treatment: _accidental_ deaths are
consequently more common than cures.
Dissection again is even now repulsive to their Oriental prejudices; the
pupils learn rather by plates, diagrams, models, preparations, and
skeletons, than from anatomical experiments on a subject. As among the
ancients and in the East to this day an idea is prevalent among the
masses in Spain, that the touch of a dead body pollutes; nor is the
objection raised by the clergy, that it savours of impiety to mutilate a
form made in the image of God, yet exploded. It will be remembered by
our medical readers, if we have any, that Vezalius, the father of modern
anatomy, when at Madrid was demanded by the Inquisition from Philip II.,
to be burnt for having performed an operation. The king sent him to
expiate his sin by a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; he was shipwrecked,
and died of starvation at Zante.
Can it be wondered at, with such a theoretical education, that practice
should continue to be antiquated, classical, and Oriental, and
necessarily very limited? In difficult cases of compound fracture,
gun-shot wounds, the doctors give the patient up almost at once,
although they continue to meet and take fees, until death relieves him
of his complicated sufferings. In chronic cases and slighter fractures
they are less dangerous; for as their pottering remedies do neither good
nor harm, the struggle for life and death is left to nature, who
sometimes works the cure. In acute diseases and inflammations they
seldom succeed; for however fond of the lancet, they only nibble with
the case, and are scared at the bold decided practice of Englishmen,
whereat they shrug up shoulders, invoke saints, and descant learnedly on
the impossibility of treating complaints under the bright sun and warm
air of Catholic Spain, after the formulæ of cold, damp, and foggy,
heretical England.
[Sidenote: FAMILY PHYSICIAN.]
Most Spaniards who can afford it have their family or bolster doctor,
the _Medico de Cabecera_, and their confessor. This pair take care of
the bodies and souls of the whole house, bring them gossip, share their
_puchero_, purse, and tobacco. They rule the husband through the women
and the nursery, nor do they allow their exclusive privileges to be
infringed on. Etiquette is the life of a Spaniard, and often his death,
since every one has heard (the Spaniards swear it is all a French lie)
that Philip III. was killed, rather than violate a form. He was seated
too near the fire, and, although burning, of course as king of Spain the
impropriety of moving himself never entered his head, and when he
requested one of his attendants to do so, none, in the absence of the
proper officer whose duty it was to superintend the royal chair,
ventured to take that improper liberty. In case of sudden emergencies
among her Catholic Majesty’s subjects, unless the family doctor be
present, any other one, even if called in, generally declines acting
until the regular Esculapius arrives. An English medical friend of ours
saved a Spaniard’s life by chancing to arrive when the patient, in an
apoplectic fit, was foaming at the mouth and wrestling with death; all
this time a strange doctor was sitting quietly in the next room smoking
his cigar at the _brasero_, the chafing-dish, with the women of the
family. Our friend instantly took 30 ounces from the sufferer’s arm, not
one of the Spanish party even moving from their seats. Thus Apollo
preserved him! The same medical gentleman happened to accidentally call
on a person who had an inflammation in the cornea of the eye: on
questioning he found that many consultations had been previously held,
at which no determination was come to until at the last, when
sea-bathing was prescribed, with a course of asses’ milk and Chiclana
snake-broth; our heretical friend, who lacked the true faith, just
touched the diseased part with caustic. When this application was
reported at the next consultation, the native doctors all crossed
themselves with horror and amazement, which was increased when the
patient recovered in a week.
[Sidenote: MEDICAL COSTUME.]
As a general rule at the first visit, they look as wise as possible,
shake their heads before the women, and always magnify the complaint,
which is a safe proceeding all over the world, since all physicians can
either cure or kill the patient; in the first event they get greater
credit and reward, while in the other alternative, the disease, having
been beyond the reach of art, bears the blame. The _medicos_ exhibit
considerable ingenuity in prolonging an apparent necessity for a
continuance of their visits. A common interest induces them to pull
together--a rare exception in Spain--and play into each other’s hands.
The family doctor, whenever appearances will in anywise justify him,
becomes alarmed, and requires a consultation, a _Junta_. What any
Spanish Junta is in affairs of peace or war need not be explained; and
these are like the rest, they either do nothing, or what they do do, is
done badly. At these meetings from three to seven _Medicos de
apelacion_, consulting physicians, attend, or more, according to the
patient’s purse: each goes to the sick man, feels his pulse, asks him
some questions, and then retires to the next room to consult, generally
allowing the invalid the benefit of hearing what passes. The
_Protomedico_, or senior, takes the chair; and while all are lighting
their cigars, the family doctor opens the case, by stating the birth,
parentage, and history of the patient, his constitution, the complaint,
and the medicines hitherto prescribed. The senior next rises, and gives
his opinion, often speaking for half an hour; the others follow in their
rotation, and then the _Protomedico_, like a judge, sums up, going over
each opinion with comments: the usual termination is either to confirm
the previous treatment, or make some insignificant alteration: the only
certain thing is to appoint another consultation for the next day, for
which the fees are heavy, each taking from three to five dollars. The
consultation often lasts many hours, and becomes at last a chronic
complaint.
[Sidenote: PRESCRIPTIONS.]
It must be said, in justice to these able practitioners, that as a body
they are careful in their dress: external appearance, not to say finery
in apparel, raises in the eyes of the many, a profession which here is
of uncertain social standing. On the same principle how careful is the
costume, how brilliant are the shirt-studs of foreign fiddlers when in
England! The worthy Andalucian doctor of our Spanish family, and an
efficient one, as two of his patients now at rest could testify, never
paid a visit except when gaily attired. So the _Matador_, when he enters
the arena to kill the bull, is clad as a first-rate dandy _majo_. This
attention to person arises partly from the Moro-Ibero love of
ostentation, and partly from sound Galenic principles and a high sense
of professional duty. The ancient authorities enforced on the
practitioner an attention to everything which created cheerful
impressions, in order that he might arrive at the patient’s pillow like
a messenger of good tidings, and as a minister of health, not of death.
They held that a grave costume might suggest unpleasant associations to
the sick man. Raven-coloured undertaker tights, and a funereal,
cadaverous look to match, are harbingers of blue devils and black crape,
which no man, even when in blessed health, contemplates with comfort;
while the effect of such a _facies hippocratica_ staring in the face of
a poor devil whose life is despaired of, must be fatal.
[Sidenote: DRUGGISTS.]
The prescriptions of these well-dressed gentlemen are somewhat more
old-fashioned than their coats. Their grand recipe in the first instance
is to do nothing beyond taking the fee and leaving nature alone, or, as
the set phrase has it, _dejar á la naturaleza_. The young and those
whose constitutions are strong and whose complaints are weak, do well
under the healing influence of their kind nurse Nature, and recover
through her vis medicatrix, which, if not obstructed by art, everywhere
works wonderful cures. The _Sangrado_ will say that a Spanish man or
woman is more marvellously made than a clock, inasmuch as his or her
machinery has a power in itself to regulate its own motions, and to
repair accidents; and therefore the watchmaker who is called in, need
not be in a hurry to take it to pieces when a little oiling and cleaning
may set all to rights. The remedies, when the proper time for their
application arrives, are simple, and are sought for rather among the
vegetables of the earth’s surface than from the minerals in its bowels.
The external recipes consist chiefly of papers smeared with lard,
applied to the abdomen, sinapisms and mustard poultices to the feet,
fomentations of marsh-mallows or camomile flowers, and the aid of the
curate. The internal remedies, the tisanes, the _Leches de Almendras_,
_de Burras_, decoctions of rice, and so forth, succeed each other in
such regular order, that the patient scholar has nothing to do but
repeat the medical passages in Horace’s ‘Satires.’ In no country,
however, can all the sick be always expected to recover even then, since
“_Para todo hay remedio, sino para la muerte_”--“There is a remedy for
everything except death.” If by chance the patient dies, the doctor and
the disease bear the blame. Perhaps the old Iberian custom was the
safest; then the sick were exposed outside their doors, and the advice
of casual passengers was asked, whose prescriptions were quite as likely
to answer as images, relics, snake-soup, or milk of almonds or asses:--
“And, doctor, do you really think
That asses’ milk I ought to drink?
It cured yourself, I grant, is true,
But then ’twas mother’s milk to you.”
[Sidenote: SNAKE-BROTH.]
Nor, if the doctors knew how to prescribe them, are the nicer and most
efficacious remedies, the preparations of modern chemical science, to be
procured in any except the very largest towns; although, as in Romeo’s
apothecary, “the needy” shelves are filled with empty boxes “to make a
show.” The trade of a druggist is anything but free, and the numbers are
limited; none may open a _Botica_ without a strict examination and
licence; although, of course, this is to be had for money. None may sell
any potent medicine, except according to the prescription of some
_local_ medical man; everything is a monopoly. The commonest drugs are
often either wanting or grossly adulterated, but, as in their arsenals
and larders, no dispenser will admit such destitution; _hay de todo_, I
have every thing, swears he, and gallantly makes up the prescription
simply by substituting other ingredients; and as the correct ones nine
times out of ten are harmless, no great injury is sustained. There is
nothing new in this, for Quevedo, in his _Zahurdas de Pluton_, or
Satan’s Pigsties, introduces a yellow-faced bilious judge scourging
Spanish apothecaries for doing exactly the same, “Hence your shops,”
quoth he, for he both preached and flogged, “are arsenals of death,
whose ministers here get their pills (balls rather) which banish souls
from the earth;” but these and other things have been long done with
impunity, as Pliny said, no physician was ever hung for murder. One
advantage of general distrust in drugs and doctors is, that the great
masses of the people think very little about them or their complaints:
thus they escape all fancied and imaginary complaints, which, if
indulged in, become chronic, and more difficult to cure than those
afflicting the body--for who can minister to a mind diseased? Again,
from this want of confidence in remedies, very little physic at all is
taken; owing to this limited demand, druggists’ shops are as rare in
Spain as those of booksellers. No red, green, or blue bottles illuminate
the streets at night, and there are more of these radiant orbs in the
Fore street of the capital of the west of England, than in the whole
capital of the Spains, albeit with a population six times greater. It
is true that, at Madrid, feeding on plum-pudding, diluted with sour
cider and clotted cream, is not habitual.
Many of the prescriptions of Spain are local, and consist of some
particular spring, some herb, some animal, or some particular air, or
place, or bath, is recommended, which, however, is said to be very
dangerous, unless some resident local _medico_ be first consulted. One
example is as good as a thousand: near Cadiz is Chiclana, to which the
faculty invariably transport those patients whom they cannot cure, that
is, about ninety-five in the hundred; so in chronic complaints
sea-bathing there, is prescribed, with a course of asses’ milk; and if
that fail, then a broth made of a long harmless snake, which abounds in
the aromatic wastes near _Barrosa_. We have forgotten the generic name
of this valuable reptile of Esculapius, one of which our naturalists
should take alive, and either breed from it in the Regent’s Park, or at
least investigate his comparative anatomy with those exquisite vipers
which make, as we have shown, such delicious pork at Montanches.
[Sidenote: SALVE FOR KNIFE-CUTS.]
We cannot refrain from giving one more prescription. Many of the murders
in Spain should rather be called homicides, being free from malice
prepense, and caused by the _readiness_ of the national _cuchillo_, with
which all the lower classes are armed like wasps; it is thus always at
hand, when the blood is most on fire, and before any refrigeratory
process commences. Thus, where an unarmed Englishman _closes_ his fist,
a Spaniard opens his knife. This rascally instrument becomes fatal in
jealous broils, when the lower classes light their anger at the torch of
the Furies, and prefer using, to speaking daggers. Then the thrust goes
home; and however unskilled the regular _Sangrados_ may be in anatomy
and handling the scalpel, the universal people know exactly how to
manage their knife and where to plant its blow; nor is there any
mistake, for the wound, although not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a
church door, “’t will serve.” It is usually given after the treacherous
fashion of their Oriental and Iberian ancestors, and if possible by a
stab behind, and “under the fifth rib;” and “one blow” is enough. The
blade, like the cognate Arkansas or Bowie knife of the Yankees, will
“rip up a man right away,” or drill him until a surgeon can see through
his body. The number killed on great religious and other festivals,
exceeds those of most Spanish battles in the field, although the
occurrence is scarcely noticed in the newspapers, so much is it a matter
of course; but crimes which call forth a second edition and double sheet
in our papers, are slurred over on the Continent, for foreigners conceal
what we most display.
In minor cases of flirtation, where capital punishment is not called
for, the offending party just gashes the cheek of the peccant one, and
suiting the word to the action observes, “_ya estas senalaā_;” “Now
you are marked.” This is precisely _winkel quarte_, the gash in the
cheek, which is the only salve for the touchy honour of a German
student, when called _ein dummer junge_, a stupid youth:--
“Und ist die quart gesessen
So ist der touche vergessen.”
Again, “_Mira que te pego, mira que te mato_,” “Mind I don’t strike
thee--mind I don’t kill thee;” are playful fondling expressions of a
_Maja_ to a _Majo_. When this particular gash is only threatened, the
Seville phrase was, “_Mira que te pinto un jabeque_;” “Take care that I
don’t draw you a xebeck” (the sharp Mediterranean felucca). “They jest
at wounds who never felt a scar,” but whenever this _jabeque_ has really
been inflicted the patient, ashamed of the stigma, and not having the
face to show himself or herself, is naturally anxious to recover a good
character and skin, which only one cosmetic, one sovereign panacea, can
effect. This in Philip IV.’s time was cat’s grease which then removed
such superfluous marks; while Don Quixote considered the oil of
Apariccio to be the only cure for scratches inflicted by female or
feline claws.
[Sidenote: THE PARISH DOCTOR.]
In process of time, as science advanced, this was superseded by _Unto
del hombre_, or man’s grease. Our estimable friend Don Nicolas Molero, a
surgeon in high practice at Seville, assured us that previously to the
French invasion he had often prepared this cataleptic specific, which
used to be sold for its weight in gold, until, having been adulterated
by unprincipled empirics, it fell into disrepute. The receipt of the
balsam of Fierabras has puzzled the modern commentators of Don Quixote,
but the kindness of Don Nicolas furnished us with the ingredients of
this _pommade divine_, or rather _mortale_. “Take a man in full health
who has been just killed, the fresher the better, pare off the fat round
the heart, melt it over a slow fire, clarify, and put it away in a cool
place for use.” The multitudinous church ceremonies and holidays in
Spain, which bring crowds together, combined with the sun, wine, and
women, have always ensured a supply of fine subjects.
In Spain, as elsewhere, the doctor mania is an expensive amusement,
which the poor and more numerous class, especially in rural localities,
seldom indulge in. Like their mules, they are rarely ill, and they only
take to their beds to die. They have, it is true, a parish doctor, to
whom certain districts are apportioned; when he in his turn succumbs to
death, or is otherwise removed, the vacancy is usually announced in the
newspapers, and a new functionary is often advertised for. His trifling
salary is made up of payments in money and in kind, so much in corn and
so much in cash; the leading principle is cheapness, and, as in our new
poor-law, that proficient is preferred, who will contract to do for the
greatest number at the smallest charge. His constituents decline
sometimes to place full confidence in his skill or alacrity: they
oftener do consult the barber, the quack, or _curandero_; for there is
generally in orthodox Spain some charlatan wherever sword, rosary, pen,
or lancet is to be wielded. The nostrums, charms, relics, incantations,
&c., to which recourse is had, when not mediæval, are scarcely
Christian; but the spiritual pharmacopœia of this land of Figaro is
far too important to form the tail-piece of any chapter.
[Sidenote: SPIRITUAL REMEDIES FOR THE BODY.]