EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.
The face of the dead man was slightly convulsed, the mouth open, the eye-balls turned into their sockets from the wrench. A black bier, with two lanterns fixed on staves, and a crucifix, was now set down before the scaffold—also a small table and a dish, into which alms were again collected, to be paid to the priests who sang masses for his soul. The mob having discussed his crimes, abused the authorities and judges, and criticised the manner of the new executioner (it was his maiden effort), began slowly to disperse, to the great content of the neighbouring silversmiths, who ventured to open their closed shutters, having hitherto placed more confidence in bolts and bars, than in the moral example presented to the spectators. The body remained on the scaffold till the afternoon; it was then thrown into a scavenger’s cart, and led by the “pregonero,” the common crier, beyond the jurisdiction of the city, to a square platform called “La mesa del Rey,” the king’s table, where the bodies of the executed are quartered and cut up—“a pretty dish to set before a king.” Here the carcase was hewed and hacked into pieces by the bungling executioner and his attendants, with that inimitable defiance of anatomy for which they and Spanish surgeons are equally renowned—
“Le gambe di lui gettaron in una fossa;
Il Diavol ebbe l’alma, i lupi l’ossa.”
“The legs of the robber were thrown in a hole,
The wolves got his bones, the devil his soul.”
THE SPANISH DOCTOR.
CHAPTER XVII.
The Spanish Doctor: his Social Position—Medical Abuses—Hospitals—Medical Education—Lunatic Asylums—Foundling Hospital of Seville—Medical Pretensions—Dissection—Family Physician—Consultations—Medical Costume—Prescriptions—Druggists—Snake Broth—Salve for Knife-cuts.
THE transition from the Spanish ventero to the ladron was easy, nor is that from the robbers to the doctors of Spain difficult; the former at least offer a polite alternative, they demand “your money or your life,” while the latter in most cases take both; yet these able practitioners, from being less picturesque in costume, and more undramatic in operations, do not enjoy so brilliant a European reputation as the bandits. Again, while our critical monitors cry thieves on every road of the Peninsula, no friendly warning is given against the Sangrado, whose aspect is more deadly than the coup de soleil of a Castilian sun: woe waits the wayfarer who falls into his hands; the patient cannot be too quick in ordering the measure to be taken of his coffin, or, as Spaniards say, of his tombstone, which last article is shadowed out by the first feeling of the invalid’s pulse—tomar el pulso, es prognosticar al enfermo la loza. It was probably from a knowledge of this contingent remainder, that Monsieur Orfila went, or was sent, from Paris to Madrid, about the time of the Montpensier marriage with the Infanta, in the hopes of rescuing her elder and reigning sister, the “innocent” Isabel, from the fatal native lancets—a well-meant interference of the foreigner, by the way, which the Spanish faculty resented and rejected to a man; nor were the guarded suggestions of this eminent toxicologiste, or investigator of poisons, with regard to the administration of medicines and dispensaries, received so thankfully as they deserved.
THE SPANISH DOCTOR.