“Oh tribus Antyceris caput insanabile!”
FOUNDLING HOSPITALS.
To return, however, to Spanish madmen and their hospitals, the sight was a sad one, and alike disgraceful to the sane, and degrading to the insane native. The wild maniacs implored a “loan” from the foreigner, for from their own countrymen they had received a stone. A sort of madness is indeed seldom wanting to the frantic energy and intense eagerness of all Spanish mendicants; and here, albeit the reasoning faculties were gone, the national propensity to beg and borrow survived the wreck of intellect, and in fact it was and is the indestructible “common sense” of the country.
There was generally some particular patient whose aggravated misery made him or her the especial object of cruel curiosity. Thus, at Toledo, in 1843, the keepers (fit wild beast term) always conducted strangers to the cage or den of the wife of a celebrated Captain-General and first-rate fusilier of Catalonia, an officer superior in power to our Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. She was permitted to wallow in naked filth, and be made a public show. The Moors, at least, do not confine their harmless female maniacs, who wander naked through the streets, while the men are honoured as saints, whose minds are supposed to be wandering in heaven. The old Iberian doctors, according to Pliny, professed to cure madness with the herb vettonica, and hydrophobia with decoction of the cynorrhodon or dog-rose-water, as being doubly unpalateable to the rabid canine species. The modern Spaniards seemed only to desire, by ignorance and ill-usage, to darken any lucid interval into one raving uniformity.
The foundling hospitals were, when we last examined them, scarcely better managed than the lunatic asylums; they are called casas de espositos, houses of the exposed—or la Cuna, the cradle, as if they were the cradle, not the coffin, of miserable infants. Most large cities in Spain have one of these receptacles; the principal being in the Levitical towns, and the natural fruit of a rich celibate clergy, both regular and secular. The Cuna in our time might have been defined as a place where innocents were massacred, and natural children deserted by their unnatural parents were provided for by being slowly starved. These hospitals were first founded at Milan in 787, by a priest named Datheus. That of Seville, which we will describe, was established by the clergy of the cathedral, and was managed by twelve directors, six lay and six clerical; few, however, attended or contributed save in subjects. The hospital is situate in the Calle de la Cuna; near an aperture left for charitable donations, is a marble tablet with this verse from the Psalms, inscribed in Latin, “When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me in.”
FOUNDLING HOSPITAL AT SEVILLE.
A wicket door is pierced in the wall, which opens on being tapped to admit the sinless children of sin; and a nurse sits up at night to receive those exposed by parents who hide their guilt in darkness.
“Toi que l’amour fit par un crime,
Et que l’amour défait par un crime à son tour,
Funeste ouvrage de l’amour,
De l’amour funeste victime.”
Some of the babies are already dying, and are put in here in order to avoid the expense of a funeral; others are almost naked, while a few are well supplied with linen and necessaries. These latter are the offspring of the better classes, by whom a temporary concealment is desired. With such the most affecting letters are left, praying the nurses to take more than usual care of a child which will surely be one day reclaimed, and a mark or ornament is usually fastened to the infant, in order that it may be identified hereafter, if called for, and such were the precise customs in antiquity. Every particular regarding every exposed babe is registered in a book, which is a sad record of human crime and remorse.
Those children which are afterwards reclaimed, pay about sixpence for every day during which the hospital has maintained them; but little attention is paid to the appeals for particular care, or to the promise of redemption, for Spaniards seldom trust each other. Unless some name is sent with it, the child is baptized with one given by the matron, and it usually is that of the saint of the day of its admission. The number was very great, and increased with increasing poverty, while the funds destined to support the charges decreased from the same cause. There is a certain and great influx nine months after the Holy week and Christmas, when the whole city, male and female, pass the night in kneeling to relics and images, &c.; accordingly nine months afterwards, in January and November, the daily numbers often exceed the usual average by fifteen to twenty.