At present, however, young men hardly acquire the rudiments of medical knowledge when they are hurried away to the army; and having never enjoyed the advantages of an early systematic education, and being thus hurried into practice, it is to be feared that many of them will be satisfied with the perusal of a few manuals or formularies, and never attain enlarged views of their profession. But the military surgeon has ample opportunities of using the knife; and surgery is now very much improved in Peru, where, till lately, the first principles of this branch of the profession were ill understood. The pharmacy of Lima consisted chiefly of herbs and simples, till English and French apothecaries’ stores were opened, and furnished the public with the best remedies, which were soon approved, and recommended by those native physicians who adopted a more active practice than their predecessors. In the present day nearly all the native physicians of any note order their prescriptions from the French apothecaries.
This leads us to remark, that in the well-known Memoirs of General Miller there is a lively account of the wandering practisers of physic of the aboriginal tribe of Callavayas or Yungeños, who, laden with barks, balsams, and herbs, are said to migrate periodically from the vicinity of La Paz, and “traverse the mountains of Peru, Quito, and Chile, and the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, exercising their vocation wherever their assistance is required, to the distance of five or six hundred leagues.” Some medicinal herbs collected on the mountains and in the valleys are always in requisition, and constitute the chief ingredients of the domestic medicine of those who inhabit the villages of the interior of Peru; but as French and English assortments of medicine have become so common of late, the Callavayas have ceased to visit such parts of that country as we are acquainted with. But there are still a set of quacks, generally men of swarthy and mixed race, in every town and village of general traffic or importance, who subsist on the credulity of mankind, and are appropriately distinguished by the name of Mata-sanos, or killers of the healthy.
No active measures have yet been adopted to suppress the flagrant abuses of the Mata-sanos, who infest the interior villages of Peru; where, we regret to say, even the regular practitioner is a kind of public extortioner, who, persuaded that the price of his services is never to be paid after pain and the sense of danger are removed from the sick, is accustomed to make his bargain, and withhold his remedy till he secures beforehand his fee: and the bargain is usually screwed up to the utmost when the patient is known to be rich, and believes his own life in danger. In consideration of the medical destitution of the interior of the republic, and the crying evil thus entailed on the community, it was suggested to the legitimate government in the year 1835, that, from every prefectorate of the republic, a certain number of disciples should be sent to be educated at the common expense, in the medical college at Lima; and that after these young men had completed their studies, and were found duly qualified to exercise the medical profession, they should be made to return as practitioners to their respective provinces. This proposal would probably have been carried into effect, had the country been left to enjoy public tranquillity; and it is obvious how easily, under such an arrangement, villages and districts of several thousand inhabitants could, by contributing an average annual sum of only a few reals from each individual, procure for themselves a salaried medical adviser, from the midst of their own Indian or mixed population, in every way the most fitted to pass his time usefully and agreeably among his native hills. But, as things are at present, it is almost impossible, even at great expense to individuals, to procure proper medical attendance in the time of need; for the variable climate and temperature of the interior changing from hill to dingle, and frequently from league to league, is peculiarly unfavourable and disagreeable to the constitution and habits of the medical gentlemen of the coast, (among whom there are some highly respectable and able men,) who are commonly of various gradations of caste, from the black through all the tints between this colour and white or European; so that we need not be surprised at the reluctance of these individuals to undertake the practice, or expose themselves to the privations of the frigid regions of the interior. But the people of the Sierra, or upland of Peru, being unprovided with medical teachers of their own, can only rely on the capital and coast (where there is no scarcity of doctors, both native and foreign,) for the supply of such regularly educated physicians or surgeons as are here and there found in the interior; and even these are not always stationary in one town or province, but often ambulate backwards and forwards as their interest or inclination happen to dictate. But, whether settled permanently in one locality or not, it usually happens that when the Sierra doctor is called upon to visit a patient, he rises from the card or diceing table; and the sort of prescription given for the cure of the sick will naturally depend on the state of mind in which the gambler happens to be at the time.
Having said so much on the state of the medical schools and practice of medicine, it may be expected that we should advert to the interesting subject of schools and education in general.
Small schools for reading, on the Lancasterian plan, are very common in the capital, and not unknown in the provincial and inland towns; and all—we think all—the white children are taught to read and write. The Bible too, as translated by Scio, is openly sold by book-dealers, and it is read by individuals in the Spanish language; but no Mr. Wood[16] is found among them, to carry forward the instruction of the pupils on the basis of the sacred writings.
Close to the public library at St. Pedro’s church, which contains a large and valuable collection of books, there is a Latin academy, which was intended to be a great national school after the declaration of Peruvian independence; but it is not, we believe, now in a flourishing state: and the colleges of San Carlos and San Toribio have dwindled away under the baneful influence of a succession of revolutions, and governments misnamed patriotic, which are as hostile to science, though on a different principle, as was the dark reign of the inquisition under the sway of old Spain.
Early in the nineteenth, as we have already shown to have been the case in the sixteenth century, the taste of the natives leaned to scholastic theology, the philosophy of Aristotle, and the civil law of the Romans.
Heineccius still preserves his authority within the cloisters of the Lima colleges, which are too often deserted for want of funds for their support,—one of the many evils consequent on frequent political commotions!
It has been long a subject of remark and regret, that, in these principal seminaries of learning, scarcely any of the scholars attended to their studies, except those who were sent from remote provinces, and who were not yet wedded to the idle and luxurious habits of the Limenian youth. Indeed, the expression “buen colegial” is proverbial in all Peru as peculiarly characteristic of young gentlemen devoted to gallantry, or who are observed to care more for their loves than their lessons.