In the rainy season the thermometer ascends to 90° or 96° Fahrenheit; but, during the dry season, it ranges from 65° to 85°, being 65° at night, and rarely exceeding 80°, though it sometimes reaches 85° during the day. The rain usually falls in the afternoon or night, seldom in the forenoon, when the sun is often so powerful as nearly to dry up the pools and streets before the evening rain comes on again; however, there are days when no rain falls. The houses being covered with tiles, and furnished with arcades, are sufficiently defended against sun and rain. The plain extending between mountain and sea is, for ten or twelve leagues inland, well wooded, and intersected here and there with smaller rivers which the natives call esteros or lakes, in allusion probably to their appearance during the wet season, when, teeming with alligators, they inundate the beautiful meadows round about; so that the term “river” is only applied, by way of distinction, to the great navigable river of the city, which is so influenced by the tide, at least in the dry season, as to be quite briny to the taste. Here the natives bathe all the year round,—a practice, we believe, which conduces not a little to the general health and fair and stately form of the Guayaquilenian ladies, who are said to be fonder of town, and the ease of their hammocks, than of country air and exercise. The streets of Guayaquil, being steeped in rain, become contaminated for want of police; insects swarm on every side, and vegetable and animal emanations pollute the atmosphere: malaria abounds; and fevers, dysenteries, and various gastric disorders attack the inhabitants, and especially the imprudent stranger, who, trusting in his youth and strength, and not considering that difference of climate demands corresponding difference of life, perseveres in the same habits under every parallel of latitude through which he passes from one temperate zone to the other.
In warm and humid situations, such as Guayaquil, surrounded by rivers, stagnant pools, lagoons, and exuberant vegetation, atmospherical heat may operate in causing disease, not merely by promoting the production of miasmata, but also by increasing the irritability of the organs of the body, so as to predispose to severe attacks of illness. The affection of the skin commonly known under the name of “prickly heat” is very likely to arise from profuse perspiration while in Guayaquil; and all excess in the cuticular secretion should be avoided by every proper means, such as suitable clothing, temperate living, and moderate bodily exertion, &c. The contrary practice, of encouraging sweat by heating drinks, has a bad tendency, both moral and physical:—physically, it produces, sooner or later, gastric and hepatic diseases;—morally, it furnishes a pretext and excuse for deep potations;—and the end of all is a broken down constitution, and a mind impaired in its noblest powers. In another point of view, without supposing that the fevers which on the shores of the Pacific are termed putrid arise from the want of a due quantity of saline ingredients in the blood, it is not improbable that, when perspiration is excessive and too long continued, it may indeed carry off from the circulation more of these saline portions than can be quite compatible with a state of perfect health. We have sometimes observed horses, when hard pressed on a hot day along the sandy plains of Peru, lie down exhausted and overcome by excessive sweat and muscular exertion; and, on being unsaddled and allowed to cool, the poor animals on such occasions would appear as if covered with hoar-frost, from the quantity of saline matter left behind from the fluids perspired and evaporated.
Moderate transpiration, however, is a cooling process, and a necessary one to the natural condition of the system, when the circulation of the blood is much increased, as is the case under high atmospherical temperature, though at the same time muscular vigour usually becomes much diminished under such circumstances. The functions of the stomach often grow languid as the relaxation of the skin has been great and long continued; but, while the appetite is thus diminished, the flow of bile is apt to be increased, and the bowels often become irregular,—sometimes too lax and irritable, at other times torpid and costive.
In one we may observe that, when the bowels are lax from an overflow of bile, the skin is dry, and that for months together; while in another, exposed to the same changes of climate, the skin is always soft, while the secretion from the kidneys is scanty, and the intestines appear to lack their wonted moisture, and become sluggish, as if deprived of their muscular power of healthy action. But it more usually occurs, on being transported from a cold to a warm and humid climate, that a very notable alteration and increase is observed in both secretions—the biliary and cutaneous, of the liver and of the skin. The state of the bowels therefore requires to be attended to very particularly in all great transitions of climate; because, from undue accumulations in the intestinal passages during warm and sultry weather, irritation and fever may ensue, and a bilious disorder of the bowels, if neglected, or ill-treated, will too readily decline into a fatal dysentery.
Having in the first chapter of the first volume of this work given a sufficiently minute account of the climate of the Peruvian coast, it will now be enough for us to remark that, at its northern extremity, though bordering on the verdant country of the Equatorial Republic, the air of the coast of Peru is less humid than it is at its southern limit, where it joins the desert of Atacama.
The peculiar dryness of the province of Piura is not explained by the fact that in this part of the coast the Andes retire farther inland than in many others; for, from Piura, we have only to pass the river Tumbez, when, as formerly mentioned, the face of nature is quite changed, and the plains of Guayaquil, though at their lower and more maritime parts far distant from the inland piles of mountains, are nevertheless deluged in rain during the wet season; whereas Payta, the sea-port of Piura, has (as we have been informed by a native of those parts, our enlightened and public-spirited friend, Don Santiago Tabara,) not unfrequently, for years in succession,—sometimes as many as ten or twelve years,—not a shower to give life to a single blade of grass.
At Truxillo, again, the capital of a Peruvian province, situated on the coast in lat. 8° 8´ south, the air is much drier than at Lima or Callao in 12° 2´ of south latitude: yet Truxillo is in the vicinity of lofty mountains which run parallel to the coast; and Huanchaco, its sea-port, is situated at the foot of the lofty Bell Mountains. But, to enumerate no more particulars, we think it will be found true as a general proposition that, from the desert of Atacama to the landing-place of Pizarro on the banks of the Tumbez,—from the southern tropic to close upon the line,—there is a progressive diminution of atmospherical humidity.
The difference thus marked in the state of the air appears to influence very materially the character of several diseases, as intermittent fevers or tercianas, which on the northern coast of Peru, or what is called costa de abajo, and more particularly in the eminently dry province of Piura, are of milder type than along the shores of the southern and maritime departments of Peru, known under the name of los intermedios.
The Indian population of Piura are a hardy and healthy race of people, naturally inclined to corpulency; and, indeed, the Indians of Peru in general are constitutionally disposed to a sleek rotundity of form, which it would only require ease and good generous diet to call into full developement, so as to render the bulk of this race as fat as Caciques. Most of the chronic diseases of the Piuranos are said to result from leaving all to nature in the earlier stages of their complaints; and, among these northern provincialists, phthisis, dysentery, tercianas or agues, and typhus mitior,[32] are endemic. The same sort of complaints, varying however in the intensity of attendant symptoms, are met with all along the maritime valleys of the coast; and in the list of prevalent diseases at Lima and elsewhere, visceral obstructions, intestinal hæmorrhage, disorders of the heart, and asthma, deserve particular notice. There are also a variety of cutaneous eruptions and nervous diseases of frequent occurrence, upon the nature and cure of which it is not at present our purpose to enlarge.
In consumption, which, in all its various forms, is a common disease on the coast of Peru, a portion of the lungs becoming by degrees ulcerated and destroyed, there is consequently an interruption to the proper discharge of the pulmonary functions, accompanied with nocturnal increase of fever and excessive perspiration. But, even in this advanced stage of the disease, changing the air of the coast for that of the mountains or temperate valleys of the Sierra, is found to produce great relief and prolongation of life.