When there is a feeling of sickness and faintness, with a disconsolate sensation (called “un desconsuelo”) at the epigastrium or scrobiculus cordis, they are allowed on all occasions to apply to the stomach, as a popular remedy with the matrons, a bit of warm toast, or the breast of a fowl sprinkled over with powdered cinnamon and moistened with wine, or, as it is vernacularly expressed, “la pechuga de gallina con vino y canela;” and they agree that this application, which possesses a great deal of their confidence, commonly produces the best effects.
X. Tomar agua fria encima de colera.—To drink cold water immediately after a fit of anger, which is the meaning of the words in our text, is a frequent cause of ailment, and one which the practitioner every day hears of as the origin of the worst cases of visceral obstructions or hepatic disease. Unfortunately, the occasions of such attacks are of ordinary occurrence; for the temper of those who suffer from them is rarely under proper control, and, as a necessary consequence of the existing state of society, provocations to anger are common in every situation.
We were once consulted by a curate of an irritable disposition, and an epicure in his taste, on account of an induration and very prominent enlargement of the liver, which some time after ended in a fatal abscess. This gentleman assigned, as the exciting cause of his malady, his having drunk cold water when angry, or on occasion of a quarrel he had with his cook, a Zamba girl, who we may suppose must have spoiled some favourite sauce.
This was the first time we were consulted on an ailment said to arise from drinking cold water when angry. But afterwards, as we had engaged in more general practice, we were called upon to listen to very many statements of the same sort; and, on such multiplied and independent evidence, we are compelled to believe that this is indeed one of the usual causes of hepatic derangement very prevalent in Peru.
During these fits of anger the brain appears to be greatly excited, and the flow of blood to it increased; and the liver, which readily sympathises with the brain in our mental states of angry emotion, seems to be at the same time gorged with blood. Under these circumstances, we think a draught of cold water operates injuriously, by creating a sudden chill within, and inducing, through the channel of sympathy between the stomach and liver, contraction of the biliary excretories, which lays the foundation of more permanent congestion and consequent inflammation, by preventing the natural relief which should arise from a free flow of bile. That the ready flow or free outlet of bile is the natural and proper medium of relief in such cases, every one has an opportunity to judge; for fits of anger are so common in Lima, that a day never passes without witnessing or hearing of their ill consequences; and the most familiar and immediate effect is a bilious disorder of the bowels, or indigestion and subsequent vomiting,—just as the stomach happens to be occupied, or otherwise, during the period of mental perturbation.
We may remark, that ice and iced water are only considered safe (even by the vulgar, who use them daily with a view to restrain the excessive flow of bile consequent on an angry or choleric fit,) when they are given after the violence of the commotion is over, and after the stomach, if it happen to be loaded, has, by drinking warm water or otherwise, been freed of its contents; but in hot weather, when the skin is more relaxed, and the bilious secretion more plentiful and redundant than common, ices are much used, and iced water forms the usual drink at the hour of meals.
We meet with persons who never experience the smallest annoyance or approach to anger, without being affected by some corresponding movement in the bowels; and others are never known to get warm in earnest discussion without feeling some derangement at the stomach, or showing on the following day a white or furred tongue. In truth, the delicacy of the digestive organs, or that mobility by which their functions are so easily affected by mental emotions, is quite extraordinary; and, as the daily repair and due sustenance of the whole frame depends on the regular and healthy discharge of the digestive functions, it is not to be wondered at that, among a people by no means intellectual in their habits, the sword should often be observed to wear out its scabbard,—in other words, that the frequent agitations of passion should induce serious diseases, and easily wear out the frame in a country where the sympathy between the mind and chylopoetic organs is so very marked and influential. Hence the anxiety which experienced natives feel at the hour of awakening repentance, or the return of sober reflection, after a culpable indulgence of anger; and hence, too, the rigid abstinence or tenuous diet attended to after one has been fretful or out of temper, till the pulse is again observed to be natural, and the organs of digestion sufficiently composed: and to show how far these painful states of mind may affect the secretion of milk, we have only to recollect that the Limeña will hear her babe cry a whole day, rather than harm it by giving the breast till her own agitation, which she knows vitiates her milk, is quieted after one of those choleric movements which it has been either her fault or misfortune to suffer.
XI. Si se puede lavarse con agua fria.—In almost every case of lingering illness in either sex, it is vexatious to witness the reluctance to ablution that prevails in the capital; and this prejudice, with the dread of shaving connected with it, is particularly cherished among those who have been delicately nurtured; the male part of whom are often heard to ask “si se puede lavarse con agua fria o afeytarse?”—if it be safe to wash with cold water or to shave.
The Limenians are fond of seasonal bathing and the pleasures of a watering-place, which they know how to enjoy for three months in the year.