CHAPTER XVIII.

“Oh tribus Antyceris caput insanabile!”

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, thekeepers(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 herbvettonica, and hydrophobia with decoction of thecynorrhodonor 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 calledcasas de espositos, houses of the exposed—orla 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. TheCunain 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 theCalle 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.”

FOUNDLING HOSPITAL AT SEVILLE.

A wicket door is pierced in the wall, which opens on beingtapped 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.

FOUNDLING HOSPITAL AT SEVILLE.

There is always a supply of wet nurses at theCuna, 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 theCuna, whenthe 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 theCunawere 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. ThisCuna, 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.”

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, withEl primer sollozo de la Cuna, the first sigh of the cradle, as Riojasays, 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 theCuna, 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 theCunaof 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.

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 aremore 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 firstsabreurs, 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.

MEDICAL EDUCATION.

Meanwhile, as in courts of justice and other matters in Spain, all sounds admirably onpaper—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 youngGalenistais furnished with a licence to kill, but what is wanting from beginning to end, to practitioner and patient, islife. The medical men know, nevertheless, every aphorism of the ancients by rote, anddiscourseas 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. Whatis deficient is that clinical and best of education where the case is brought before the student with the corollary of skilful treatment:accidentaldeaths 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.

FAMILY PHYSICIAN.

Most Spaniards who can afford it have their family or bolster doctor, theMedico de Cabecera, and their confessor. This pair take care of the bodies and souls of the whole house, bring them gossip, share theirpuchero, 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 thebrasero, 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.

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. Themedicosexhibit 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, aJunta. 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 sevenMedicos 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. TheProtomedico, 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 theProtomedico, 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.

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 theMatador, when he enters the arena to kill the bull, is clad as a first-rate dandymajo. 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 afacies hippocraticastaring in the face of a poor devil whose life is despaired of, must be fatal.

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. TheSangradowill 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, theLeches 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 thinkThat asses’ milk I ought to drink?It cured yourself, I grant, is true,But then ’twas mother’s milk to you.”

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 aBoticawithout 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 somelocalmedical 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 hisZahurdas 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 ofthe 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 localmedicobe 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 nearBarrosa. 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.

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 thereadinessof the nationalcuchillo, 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 Englishmancloseshis 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 regularSangradosmay 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. Thenumber 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 preciselywinkel quarte, the gash in the cheek, which is the only salve for the touchy honour of a German student, when calledein dummer junge, a stupid youth:—

“Und ist die quart gesessenSo 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 aMajato aMajo. 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 thisjabequehas 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.

THE PARISH DOCTOR.

In process of time, as science advanced, this was superseded byUnto 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 ingredientsof thispommade divine, or rathermortale. “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, orcurandero; 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.

SPIRITUAL REMEDIES FOR THE BODY.

Spanish Spiritual Remedies for the Body—Miraculous Relics—Sanative Oils—Philosophy of Relic Remedies—Midwifery and the Cinta of Tortosa—Bull of Crusade.

THEReverend Dr. Fernando Castillo, an esteemed Spanish author and teacher, remarks, in his luminous Life of St. Domenick, that Spain has been so bountifully provided by heaven with fine climate, soil, and extra number of saints, that his countrymen are prone to be idle and to neglect such rare advantages. Certainly they may not dig and delve so deeply as is done in lands less favoured, but the reproach of omitting to call on Hercules to do their work, or of not making the most of Santiago in any bodily dilemma, is a somewhat too severe reproach: nowhere in case of sickness have the saving virtues of relics, and the adjurations of holy monks, been more implicitly relied on.

MIRACULOUS SANATIVE OILS.

COSTUME OF CONVALESCENTS.

As our learned readers well know, the medical practice of the ancients was, as that of the Orientals still is, more peculiar than scientific. When disease was thought to be a divine punishment for sin, it was held to be wicked to resist by calling in human aid: thus Asa was blamed, and thus Moslems and Spaniards resign themselves to their fate, distrusting, and very properly, their medical men: “Am I a god, to kill or make alive?” In the large towns, in these days of progress, some patients may “suffer a recovery” according to European practice; but in the country and remote villages,—and we speak from repeated personal experience,—the good old reliance on relics and charms is far from exploded; and however Dr. Sangrado and Philip III., whose decrees on medical matters yet adorn the Spanish statutes at large, deplore the introduction of perplexing chemistry, mineral therapeuticals still remain a considerable dead letter, as the church has transferred the efficacy of faith from spiritual to temporal concerns, and gun-shot wounds. Even Ponz, the Lysonsof Spain, and before the Inquisition was abolished, ventured to express surprise at the number of images ascribed to St. Luke, who, says he, was not a sculptor, but a physician, whence possibly their sanative influence. The old Iberians were great herbalist doctors; thus those who had a certain plant in their houses, were protected, as a blessed palm branch now wards off lightning. They had also a drink made of a hundred herbs, and hence calledcentum herbæ, abebida de cien herbas, which, like Morison’s vegetable pills, cured every possible disease, and was so palatable that it was drunk at banquets, which modern physic is not; moreover, according to Pliny, they cured the gout with flour, and relieved elongated uvulas by hanging purslain round the patient’s throat. So now thecuras y curanderos, country curates and quacks, furnish charms and incantations, just as Ulysses stopped his bleeding by cantation: a medal of Santiago cures the ague, a handkerchief of the Virgin the ophthalmia, a bone of San Magin answers all the purposes of mercury, a scrap of San Frutos supplied at Segovia the loss of common sense; the Virgin of Oña destroyed worms in royal Infantes, and her sash at Tortosa delivers royal Infantas. Every Murcian peasant believes that no disease can affect him or his cattle, if he touches them with the cross of Caravaca, which angels brought from heaven and placed on a red cow. When we were last at Manresa, the worthy man who showed the cave in which Loyola the founder of the Jesuits did penance for a year, increased an honest livelihood by the sale of its pulverized stones, that were swallowed by the faithful in cases in which an English doctor would prescribe Dover’s or James’s powders. Every province, not to say parish, has its own tutelar saint and relic, which are much honoured and resorted to in their local jurisdiction, and very little thought of out of it, their power to cure having been apparently granted to them by Santiago, as a commission to commit is by Queen Victoria to a magistrate, whose authority does not extend beyond the county bounds. Zaragoza was admirably provided: a portion of the liver of Santa Engracia was anciently resorted to, in cases where blue pill would be beneficial; the oil of her lamps, which never smoked the ceilings, curedlamparones, or tumours in the neck, while that which burnt before theVirgen del Pilar, or the image of the Virgin which came down from heaven on a pillar,restored lost legs; Cardinal de Retz mentions in his Memoirs having seen a man whose wooden substitutes became needless when the originals grew again on being rubbed with it; and this portent was long celebrated by the Dean and Chapter, as well it deserved, by an especial holiday, for Macassar oil cannot do much more. This graven image is at this moment the object of popular adoration, and disputes even with the worship of tobacco and money: countless are the mendicants, the halt, blind, and the lame, who cluster around her shrine, as the equally afflicted ancients, with whom physicians were in vain, did around that of Minerva; and it must be confessed that the cures worked are almost incredible.

It may be said that all this is a raking up of remnants of mediæval superstition and darkness, and it is probable that the medical men in Madrid and the larger towns, and especially those who have studied at Paris, do not place implicit confidence in these spiritual, nor indeed in any other purely Spanish remedies; but their tried medicinal properties are set forth at length in scores of Spanish county and other histories which we have the felicity to possess, all of which have passed the scrutinizing ordeal of clerical censors, and have been approved of as containing nothing contrary to the creed of the Church of Rome or good customs; nor can it be permitted that a church which professes to be always one, the same, and the only true one, should at its own convenience “turn its back on itself,” and deny its own drugs and doctrines. Nothing is set down here which was not perfectly notorious under the reign of Ferdinand VII.; and whatever the doctors of physic or theology may now disbelieve in Spain, more reliance is still placed, in the rural districts, where foreign civilization has not penetrated, on miracles than on medicines.

We have often and often seen little children in the streets dressed like Franciscan monks—Cupids in cowls—whose pious parents had vowed to clothe them in the robes of this order, provided its sainted founder preserved their darlings during measles or dentition. Nothing was more common than that women, nay, ladies in good society, should appear for a year in a particular religious dress, calledel habito, or with some religious badge on their sleeves in token of similar deliverance.

CURE OF SOULS.

One instance in our time amused all the tertulias of Seville, who maliciously attributed the sudden relief which a fair high-born unmarried invalid experienced from an apparent dropsical complaint to causes not altogether supernatural;Pues, Don Ricardo, “and so, Master Richard,” would her friends of the same age and rank often say, “you are a stranger; go and ask dearestEsperanzawhy she wears the Virgin of Carmel; come back and let us know her story, and we will tell you the real truth.”Vaya! vaya! Don Ricardo, usted es muy majadero,—“Go to, Master Richard, your Grace is an immense bore,” replied the penitent, if she suspected the authors and motive of the embassy.

The pious in antiquity raised temples to Minerva medica or Esculapius, as Spaniards do altars toNa. Señora de los Remedios, our Lady of the Remedies, and to San Roque, whose intervention renders “sound as a roach,” a proverb devised in his honour by our ancestors, who, before the Reformation, trusted likewise to him; and both thought, if Cicero is to be credited, that these tutelars didat leastas much as the doctor. Alas! for the patient credulity of mankind, which still gulps down such medicinal quackery as all this, and which long will continue to do so even were one of the dead to rise from the grave, to deprecate the absurd treatment by which he and so many have been sacrificed.

However, by way of compensation, the saving thesoulhas been made just as primary a consideration in Spain as the curing thebodyhas been in England. These relics, charms, and amulets represent our patent medicines; and the wonder is how any one in Great Britain can be condemned to death in this world, or how any one in the Peninsula can be doomed to perdition in the next: possibly the panaceas are in neither case quite specific. Be that as it may, how numerous and well-appointed are the churches and convents there, compared to the hospitals; how amply provided the relic-magazine with bones and spells, when compared to the anatomical museums and chemists’ shops; again, what a flock of holy practitioners come forthaftera Spaniard has been stabbed, starved, or executed, not one of whom would have stirred a step to save an army of his countrymen when alive; and what coppers are now collected to pay masses to get his soul out of purgatory!

PHILOSOPHY OF RELICS.

Beware, nevertheless, gentle Protestant reader, of dying in Spain, except in Cadiz or Malaga, where, if you are curious in Christian burial, there is snug lying for heretics; and for your life avoid being even sick at Madrid, since if once handed over to the faculty make thy last testament forthwith, as, if the judgment passed on their own doctors by Spaniards be true, Esculapius cannot save thee from the crows: avoid the Spanish doctors therefore like mad dogs, and throw their physic after them.

The masses and many in Spain have their own tutelars and refuges for the destitute; the kings and queens—whom God preserve!—have their own especial patroness by prerogative, in the image of the Virgin of Atocha at Madrid, which they and the rest of the royal family visit every Sunday in the year when in royal health. No sooner was the sovereign taken dangerously ill, and the court physicians at a loss what to do, as sometimes is the case even in Madrid, than the image used to be brought to his bedside; witness the case of Philip III., thus described by Bassompierre in his dispatch:—“Les médecins en désespèrent depuis ce matin que l’on a commencé à user desremèdes spirituels, et faire transporter au palaisl’imagede N. D. de Athoche.” The patient died three days after the image was sent for.

SPANISH MIDWIFERY.

Although neither priest nor physician might credit the sanative properties of rags and relics, they gladly called them in, for if the case then went wrong, how could mortal man be expected to succeed when the supernatural remedy had failed? All inquests in awkward cases are hushed up by ascribing the death to the visitation of God. Again, if a relic does not always cure it rarely kills, as calomel has been known to do. This interruptive principle, one distinct from human remedies, is admitted by the church in the prayers for sick persons; and where faith is sincere, even relics must offer a powerful moral medical cordial, by acting on the imagination, and giving confidence to the patient. This chance is denied to the poor Protestant, nay, even to a newly-converted tractarian, for truly, to believe in the efficacy of a monkish bone, the lesson must have been learnt in the nursery. Their substitute in Lutheran lands, in partibus infidelium, is found in laudanum, news, and gossip; the latter being the grand specific by which Sir Henry kept scores of dowagers alive, to the despair of jointure-paying sons, from marquises down tobaronets; and how much real comfort is conveyed by the gentle whisper, “Your ladyship cannot conceive what an interest his or her Royal Highness the —— takes in your ladyship’s convalescence!” Theformof the moral restorative will vary according to climate, creeds, manners, &c.; it is to thesubstancealone that the philosophical physician will look. That chord must be touched, be it what it may, to which the pulse of the patient will respond; nor, provided he is recovered, do the means much signify.

One word only on Spanish midwifery. There is a dislike to male accoucheurs, and the midwife, orcomadre, generally brings the Spaniard into the world by the efforts of nature and the aid ofmanteca de puerco, or hogs’ lard, a launching appropriate enough to a babe, who, if it survives to years of discretion, will assuredly love bacon. The newly-born is then wrapped up, like an Egyptian mummy, and is carefully protected from fresh air, soap, and water; an amulet is then hung round its neck to disarm the evil eye, or some badge of the Virgin is to ensure good luck: thus the young idea is taught from the cradle, what errors are to be avoided and what safeguards are to be clung to, lessons which are seldom forgotten in after-life. Without entering further into baby details, the scanty population of the Peninsula may in some measure be thus accounted for. Parturition also is frequently fatal; in ordinary cases the midwife does very well, but when a difficulty arises she loses her head and patient. It is in these trying moments, as in the critical operations of the kitchen, that a male artiste is preferable.

SPIRITUAL AIDS TO ACCOUCHEMENT.

The Queens and Infantas of Spain have additional advantages. The palladium of the city of Tortosa is thecinta[11]or girdle, which the Virgin, accompanied by St. Peter and St. Paul, brought herself from heaven to a priest of the cathedral in 1178; an event in honour of which a mass is still said every second Sunday in October. The gracious gift was declared authentic in 1617, by Paul V., and to justify his infallibility it works every sort of miracle, especially in obstetric cases; it is also brought out to defend the town on all occasions of public calamity, but failed in the case of Suchet’s attack. Thisgirdle, more wonderful than the cestus of Venus, was conveyed in 1822, by Ferdinand VII.’s command, in solemn procession to Aranjuez, in order to facilitate the accouchement of the two Infantas, and as Lucina when duly invoked favoured women in travail, so their Royal Highnesses were happily delivered, and one of the babes then born, is the husband of Isabel II. For humbler Castilian women, when pregnant, a spiritual remedy was provided by the canons of Toledo, who took the liveliest interest in many of the cases. The grand entrance to the cathedral had thirteen steps, and all females who ascended and descended them ensured an early and easy time of it. No wonder therefore, when these steps were reduced to the number of seven, that the greatest possible opposition should have been made by the fair sex, married and unmarried. All these things of Spain are rather Oriental; and to this day the Barbary Moors have a cannon at Tangiers by which a Christian ship was sunk, and across this their women sit to obtain an easy delivery. In all ages and countries where the science of midwifery has made small progress, it is natural that some spiritual assistance should be contrived for perils of such inevitable recurrence as childbirth. The panacea in Italy was the girdle of St. Margaret, which became the type of thisCintaof Tortosa, and it was resorted to by the monks in all cases of difficult parturition. It was supposed to benefit the sex, because when the devil wished to eat up St. Margaret, the Virgin bound him with her sash, and he became tame as a lamb. This sash brought forth sashes also, and in the 17th century had multiplied so exceedingly, that a traveller affirmed “if all were joined together, they would reach all down Cheapside;” but the natural history of relics is too well known to be enlarged upon.

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