“And, doctor, do you really think
That asses’ milk I ought to drink?
It cured yourself, I grant, is true,
But then ’twas mother’s milk to you.”
SNAKE-BROTH.
Nor, if the doctors knew how to prescribe them, are the nicer and most efficacious remedies, the preparations of modern chemical science, to be procured in any except the very largest towns; although, as in Romeo’s apothecary, “the needy” shelves are filled with empty boxes “to make a show.” The trade of a druggist is anything but free, and the numbers are limited; none may open a Botica without a strict examination and licence; although, of course, this is to be had for money. None may sell any potent medicine, except according to the prescription of some local medical man; everything is a monopoly. The commonest drugs are often either wanting or grossly adulterated, but, as in their arsenals and larders, no dispenser will admit such destitution; hay de todo, I have every thing, swears he, and gallantly makes up the prescription simply by substituting other ingredients; and as the correct ones nine times out of ten are harmless, no great injury is sustained. There is nothing new in this, for Quevedo, in his Zahurdas de Pluton, or Satan’s Pigsties, introduces a yellow-faced bilious judge scourging Spanish apothecaries for doing exactly the same, “Hence your shops,” quoth he, for he both preached and flogged, “are arsenals of death, whose ministers here get their pills (balls rather) which banish souls from the earth;” but these and other things have been long done with impunity, as Pliny said, no physician was ever hung for murder. One advantage of general distrust in drugs and doctors is, that the great masses of the people think very little about them or their complaints: thus they escape all fancied and imaginary complaints, which, if indulged in, become chronic, and more difficult to cure than those afflicting the body—for who can minister to a mind diseased? Again, from this want of confidence in remedies, very little physic at all is taken; owing to this limited demand, druggists’ shops are as rare in Spain as those of booksellers. No red, green, or blue bottles illuminate the streets at night, and there are more of these radiant orbs in the Fore street of the capital of the west of England, than in the whole capital of the Spains, albeit with a population six times greater. It is true that, at Madrid, feeding on plum-pudding, diluted with sour cider and clotted cream, is not habitual.
Many of the prescriptions of Spain are local, and consist of some particular spring, some herb, some animal, or some particular air, or place, or bath, is recommended, which, however, is said to be very dangerous, unless some resident local medico be first consulted. One example is as good as a thousand: near Cadiz is Chiclana, to which the faculty invariably transport those patients whom they cannot cure, that is, about ninety-five in the hundred; so in chronic complaints sea-bathing there, is prescribed, with a course of asses’ milk; and if that fail, then a broth made of a long harmless snake, which abounds in the aromatic wastes near Barrosa. We have forgotten the generic name of this valuable reptile of Esculapius, one of which our naturalists should take alive, and either breed from it in the Regent’s Park, or at least investigate his comparative anatomy with those exquisite vipers which make, as we have shown, such delicious pork at Montanches.
SALVE FOR KNIFE-CUTS.
We cannot refrain from giving one more prescription. Many of the murders in Spain should rather be called homicides, being free from malice prepense, and caused by the readiness of the national cuchillo, with which all the lower classes are armed like wasps; it is thus always at hand, when the blood is most on fire, and before any refrigeratory process commences. Thus, where an unarmed Englishman closes his fist, a Spaniard opens his knife. This rascally instrument becomes fatal in jealous broils, when the lower classes light their anger at the torch of the Furies, and prefer using, to speaking daggers. Then the thrust goes home; and however unskilled the regular Sangrados may be in anatomy and handling the scalpel, the universal people know exactly how to manage their knife and where to plant its blow; nor is there any mistake, for the wound, although not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, “’t will serve.” It is usually given after the treacherous fashion of their Oriental and Iberian ancestors, and if possible by a stab behind, and “under the fifth rib;” and “one blow” is enough. The blade, like the cognate Arkansas or Bowie knife of the Yankees, will “rip up a man right away,” or drill him until a surgeon can see through his body. The number killed on great religious and other festivals, exceeds those of most Spanish battles in the field, although the occurrence is scarcely noticed in the newspapers, so much is it a matter of course; but crimes which call forth a second edition and double sheet in our papers, are slurred over on the Continent, for foreigners conceal what we most display.
In minor cases of flirtation, where capital punishment is not called for, the offending party just gashes the cheek of the peccant one, and suiting the word to the action observes, “ya estas senalaā;” “Now you are marked.” This is precisely winkel quarte, the gash in the cheek, which is the only salve for the touchy honour of a German student, when called ein dummer junge, a stupid youth:—
“Und ist die quart gesessen
So ist der touche vergessen.”
Again, “Mira que te pego, mira que te mato,” “Mind I don’t strike thee—mind I don’t kill thee;” are playful fondling expressions of a Maja to a Majo. When this particular gash is only threatened, the Seville phrase was, “Mira que te pinto un jabeque;” “Take care that I don’t draw you a xebeck” (the sharp Mediterranean felucca). “They jest at wounds who never felt a scar,” but whenever this jabeque has really been inflicted the patient, ashamed of the stigma, and not having the face to show himself or herself, is naturally anxious to recover a good character and skin, which only one cosmetic, one sovereign panacea, can effect. This in Philip IV.’s time was cat’s grease which then removed such superfluous marks; while Don Quixote considered the oil of Apariccio to be the only cure for scratches inflicted by female or feline claws.
THE PARISH DOCTOR.