Accustomed to look on death in its most terrible form in connection with their oft-recurring religious festivals, the people seem to have become somewhat callous to its dread presence, and to have met its approach with less fear of the dark and unknown hereafter than might have been expected from their superstitious nature. An attack of illness did not necessarily produce great anxiety, or an immediate recourse to the doctor's services; but the common people resorted for the most part to simple home cures, which were the more effective as the curative properties of herbs and their modes of application were generally well known.[817] The unconcern with which they regarded sickness did not result from want of affection, for the Aztecs are said to have been very attentive to their sick, and spent their wealth without stint to save the life of friends. Yet the Tlascaltecs, a hardier race, are reported by Motolinia to have been less attentive, and some other Teo-Chichimec tribes did not hesitate to kill a patient whose malady did not soon yield to their treatment, under pretense of putting him out of his misery, but really to get him off their hands. This work of charity was performed by thrusting an arrow down the throat of the invalid, and old people were especially the recipients of such favors.[818]
The favorite remedy for almost every ill of the flesh was the vapor-bath, or temazcalli. No well-to-do citizen's house was complete without conveniences for indulging in these baths, and the poorer families of each community owned one or more temazcalli in common. The reader is already sufficiently familiar with the general features of these baths, a confined space with facilities for converting water into steam being all that was required. Clavigero describes and pictures a very graceful structure for this purpose, for which, as it seems to involve the then-unknown principle of the arch, he probably drew somewhat upon his imagination. It is of adobes, semi-globular in form, about eight feet in diameter, six feet high, with a convex floor a little below the level of the ground. On one side was an opening sufficiently large to admit a man's body, on the opposite side a square furnace separated from the interior by a slab of tetzontli, and at the top an air-hole. Most of the bath-houses, however, were simply square or oblong chambers with no furnace attached, in which case the fire had of course to be removed before the apartment was ready for use. When the apparatus was properly heated a mat was spread on the floor, and the patient entered, sometimes accompanied by an assistant, bearing a dish of water to be thrown on the floor and walls to produce steam, and a bunch of maize-leaves with which his body, and especially the part affected, was to be beaten. A plunge into cold water after a profuse perspiration was frequently but not always resorted to. As I have said, there were scarcely any maladies for which this treatment was not recommended, but it was regarded as particularly efficacious in the case of fevers brought on by costiveness, bites of venomous serpents and insects, bruises, and unstrung nerves, and to relieve the pains and purify the system of child-bearing women. The steam-baths were also much used to promote cleanliness and to refresh the weary bodies of those in good health.[819]
The beneficial effects of a change of climate upon invalids seem to have been appreciated, if we may credit Herrera, who states that Michoacan was much resorted to by the sick from all parts of the country.[820] For severe cases, the expenses of treating which could not be borne except by the wealthy classes, hospitals were established by the government in all the larger cities, endowed with ample revenues, where patients from the surrounding country were cared for by experienced doctors, surgeons, and nurses well versed in all the native healing arts.[821] Medical practitioners were numerous, who attended patients for a small remuneration; the jealousy of Spanish physicians, however, brought them into disrepute soon after the conquest, and the healing art, like others, greatly degenerated. It is related that a famous medicine-man of Michoacan was summoned before the college of physicians in Mexico on the charge of being a quack. In reply to the accusation he asked his judges to smell a certain herb, which produced a severe hemorrhage, and then invited them to check the flow of blood. Seeing that they were unable to do this promptly, he administered a powder that immediately had the desired effect. "These are my attainments," he exclaimed, "and this the manner in which I cure the ailings of my patients."[822]
THE NAHUA ESCULAPIUS.
The Esculapius of the Nahuas was embodied in the persons of Oxomococipactonatl and Tlatecuinxochicaoaca, who were traditionally the inventors of medicine and the first herbalists among the Toltecs. Soon after its invention the healing profession became one of the most highly honored, and its followers constituted a regular faculty, handing down their knowledge and practice from generation to generation, according to the Nahua caste-system, according to which the son almost invariably adopted the profession of his father, by whom he was educated. This system of education from early childhood under the father's guidance, the opportunities for practice in the public hospitals, free access to the botanical gardens, and the numerous subjects for anatomical dissection supplied by sacrificial rites, certainly offered to the Nahua doctor abundant opportunities of acquiring great knowledge and skill. The profession was not altogether in the hands of the sterner sex; for female physicians were in high repute, especially on the eastern coast. In certain cases, as of childbirth, we find the patient attended by none but women, who administer medicines and baths and render other necessary assistance, even going so far as to cut out the infant in order to save the mother's life.[823]
Medicines were given in all the usual forms of draught, powder, injection, ointment, plaster, etc.; the material for which was gathered from the three natural kingdoms in great variety. Many of the herbs were doubtless obtained from the gardens, but large quantities were obtained in the forests of different provinces by wandering collectors who brought their herbs to the market-places for sale, or even peddled them, it is said, from house to house. Each ailment had its particular corrective, the knowledge of which was not entrusted to the memory alone, but was also recorded in painted books.[824] Doubtless many of the vegetable and other medicines employed were mere nostrums administered to give an exalted opinion of the doctor's knowledge and skill rather than with any hope of effecting a cure.
TREATMENT OF VARIOUS DISEASES.
Sahagun gives page after page of native recipes for every ailment of the human body, which cannot be reproduced here. Many of the remedies and methods of application are as absurd as any of those which have been noticed among the wild tribes. For diseases of the scalp a wash of urine, an ointment of soot, and an application of black clay were prescribed, together with vegetable specifics too numerous to mention. The white of an egg was much used in mixing remedies for wounds and bruises; a certain animal tapaiaxin was eaten for a swollen face; the broth of a boiled fowl was recommended for convalescents. Cataracts on the eye were rasped and scraped with certain roots; for bloodshot eyes the membrane was cut, raised with a thorn, and anointed with woman's milk; clouded eyes were treated with lizard's dung. Morning dew cured catarrh in newly born children. Hoarseness was treated by drinking honey, and an external application of India-rubber. Wounds in the lips must be sewn up with a hair; a certain insect pounded and hot pepper were among the remedies for toothache, and great care of the teeth was recommended. Stammering in children was supposed to be caused by too long suckling. Remedies for a cold were nearly as numerous as in our day. Copper-filings were applied to bubos, which may or may not have been syphilitic sores. For looseness of the bowels in infants, the remedy was given not only to the child but to the nurse. For a severe blow on the chest, urine in which lizards had been boiled must be drunk. The necessity of regulating the bowels to sustain health was well understood, and the doctor usually effected his purpose by injecting a herbal decoction from his mouth through the leg-bone of a heron. Purgatives in common use were jalap, pine-cones, tacuache, amamaxtla, and other roots; diuretics, axixpatli and axixtlacotl; emetics, mexochitl and neixcotlapatli. Izticpatli, and chatalhuic, are mentioned among the remedies for fevers. Balsams were obtained from the huitziloxitl by distillation, from the huaconex by soaking the bark in water, and from the maripenda, by boiling the fruit and tender stones. Oils were made from tlapatl, chile, chian, ocotl (a kind of pine), and the India-rubber tree. Octli, or wine, was often prescribed to strengthen the system, and was also mixed with other medicines to render them more palatable, for which latter purpose cacao was also much used.
Several stones possessed medicinal properties: the aztetl, held in the hand or applied to the neck, stopped bleeding at the nose; the xiuhtomoltetl, taken in the form of a powder, cured heartburn and internal heat. This latter stone fell from the clouds in stormy weather, sunk into the earth, and grew continually larger and larger, a solitary tuft of grass alone indicating to the collector its whereabouts. The bones of giants dug up at the foot of the mountains, were collected by their dwarfish successors, ground to powder, mixed with cacao, and drunk as a cure for diarrhea and dysentery. Persons suffering from fever, or wishing to allay carnal desires, ate jaguar's flesh; while the skin, bones, and excrement of the same animal, burnt, powdered, and mixed with resin, formed an antidote for insanity. Certain horny-skinned worms, similarly powdered and mixed, were a specific for the gout, decayed teeth, and divers other ailments.
SUPERSTITIOUS CURATIVE RITES.