Gatherings From Spain Part 14

As we are now writing history, it may be added that great men like Jose Maria often granted pa.s.sports. This true trooper of the Deloraine breed was untrammelled with the fetters of spelling. Although he could barely write his name, he could _rubricate_[9] as well as any other Spaniard in command, or Ferdinand VII. himself. "His mark" was a protection to all who would pay him black mail. It was authenticated with such a portentous griffonage as would have done credit to Ali Pacha. An intimate friend of ours, a merry gastronomic dignitary of Seville, who was going to the baths of Caratraca, to recover from over-indulgence in rich ollas and valdepenas, and had no wish, like the gouty abbot of Boccaccio, to be put on robber regimen, procured a pa.s.s from Jose Maria, and took one of his gang as a travelling escort, who sat on the coach-box, and whom he described to us as his "_sant.i.to_," his little guardian angel.

[Sidenote: TALISMANIC DEFENCES.]

While on the subject of this spiritual and supernatural protection, it may be added that firm faith was placed in the wearing a relic, a medal of the Virgin, her rosary or scapulary. Thus the d.u.c.h.ess of Abrantes this very autumn hung the _Virgen del Pilar_ round the neck of her favourite bull-fighter, who escaped in consequence. Few Spanish soldiers go into battle without such a preservative in their _petos_, or stuffed waddings, which is supposed to turn bullets, and to divert fire, like a lightning conductor, which probably it does, as so few are ever killed.

In the more romantic days of Spain no duel or tournament could be fought without a declaration from the combatants, that they had no relic, no _engano_ or cheat, about their persons. Our friend Jose Maria attributed his constant escapes to an image of the Virgin of Grief of Cordova, which never quitted his s.h.a.ggy breast. Indeed, the native districts of the lower cla.s.ses in Spain may be generally known by their religious ornaments. These talismanic amulets are selected from the saint or relic most honoured, and esteemed most efficacious, in their immediate vicinity. Thus the "Santo Rostro," or Holy Countenance of Jaen, is worn all over the kingdom of Granada, as the Cross of Caravaca is over Murcia; the rosary of the Virgin is common to all Spain. The following miraculous proof of its saving virtues was frequently painted in the convents:--A robber was shot by a traveller and buried; his comrades, some time afterwards pa.s.sing by, heard his voice,--"this fellow in the cellarage;"--they opened the grave and found him alive and unhurt, for when he was killed, he had happened to have a rosary round his neck, and Saint Dominick (its inventor) was enabled to intercede with the Virgin in his behalf. This reliance on the Virgin is by no means confined to Spain, since the Italian banditti always wear a small silver heart of the Madonna, and this mixture of ferocity and superst.i.tion is one of the most terrific features of their character. Saint Nicholas, however, the English "Old Nick," is in all countries the patron of schoolboys, thieves, or, as Shakspere calls them, "Saint Nicholas's clerks." "Keep thy neck for the hangman, for I know thou wors.h.i.+ppest St. Nicholas as a man of falsehood may;" and like him, Santu Diavolu, Santu Diavoluni, Holy Devil, is the appropriate saint of the Sicilian bandit.

San Dimas, the "good thief," is a great saint in Andalucia, where his disciples are said to be numerous. A celebrated carving by Montanes, in Seville, is called '_El Cristo, del buen ladron_,'--"the Christ, _of_ the good thief;" thus making the Saviour a subordinate person. Spanish robbers have always been remarkably good Roman Catholics. In the Rinconete y Cortadillo, the Lurker and Cutpurse of Cervantes, whose Monipodio must have furnished f.a.gin to Boz, a box is placed before the Virgin, to which each robber contributes, and one remarks that he "robs for the service of G.o.d, and for all honest fellows." Their mountain confessors of the Friar Tuck order, animated by a pious love for dollars when expended in expiatory ma.s.ses, consider the payment to them of good doubloons such a laudable rest.i.tution, such a sincere repentance, as to ent.i.tle the contrite culprit to ample absolution, plenary indulgence, and full benefit of clergy. Notwithstanding this, these ungrateful "good thieves" have been known to rob their spiritual pastors and masters, when they catch them on the high road.

To return to the saving merit of these talismans. We ourselves suspended to our sheepskin jacket one of the silver medals of Santiago, which are sold to pilgrims at Compostella, and arrived back again to Seville from the long excursion, safe and sound and unpillaged except by _venteros_ and our faithful squire--an auspicious event, which was entirely attributed by the aforesaid dignitary to the intervention vouchsafed by the patron of the Spains to all who wore his order, which thus protects the bearer as a badge does a Thames waterman from a press-gang.

[Sidenote: EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.]

An account of the judicial death of one of the gang of Jose Maria, which we witnessed, will be an appropriate conclusion to these remarks, and an act of justice towards our fair readers for this detail of breaches of the peace, and the bad company into which they have been introduced.

Jose de Roxas, commonly called (for they generally have some nickname) _El Veneno_, "Poison," from his viper-like qualities, was surprised by some troops: he made a desperate resistance, and when brought to the ground by a ball in his leg, killed the soldier who rushed forward to secure him. He proposed when in prison to deliver up his comrades if his own life were guaranteed to him. The offer was accepted, and he was sent out with a sufficient force; and such was the terror of his name, that they surrendered themselves, _not however to him_, and were _pardoned_. Veneno was then tried for his previous offences, found guilty, and condemned: he pleaded that he had indirectly accomplished the object for which his life was promised him, but in vain; for such trials in Spain are a mere form, to give an air of legality to a predetermined sentence:--the authorities adhered to the killing letter of their agreement, and

"Kept the word of promise to the ear, But broke it to the hope."

As Veneno was without friends or money, wherewith Gines Pa.s.samonte anointed the palm of justice and got free, the sentence was of course ordered to be carried into effect. The courts of law and the prisons of Seville are situated near the Placa San Francisco, which has always been the site of public executions. On the day previous nothing indicates the scene which will take place on the following morning; everything connected with this ceremony of death is viewed with horror by Spaniards, not from that abstract abhorrence of shedding blood which among other nations induces the lower orders to detest the completer of judicial sentences, as the smaller feathered tribes do the larger birds of prey, but from ancient Oriental prejudices of pollution, and because all actually employed in the operation are accounted infamous, and lose their caste, and purity of blood. Even the gloomy scaffolding is erected in the night by unseen, unknown hands, and rises from the earth like a fungus work of darkness, to make the day hideous and shock the awakening eye of Seville. When the criminal is of n.o.ble blood the platform, which in ordinary cases is composed of mere carpenter's work, is covered with black baize. The operation of hanging, among so unmechanical a people, with no improved patent invisible drop, used to be conducted in a cruel and clumsy manner. The wretched culprits were dragged up the steps of the ladder by the executioner, who then mounted on their shoulders and threw himself off with his victims, and, while both swung backwards and forwards in the air, was busied, with spider-like fingers, in fumbling about the neck of the sufferers, until being satisfied that life was extinct he let himself down to the ground by the bodies. Execution by hanging was, however, graciously abolished by Ferdinand VII., the beloved; this father of his people determined that the future death for civil offences should be strangulation,--a mode of removing to a better world those of his children who deserved it, which is certainly more in accordance with the Oriental bow-string.

[Sidenote: EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.]

Veneno was placed, as is usual, the day before his execution, "_en capilla_" in a chapel or cell set apart for the condemned, where the last comforts of religion are administered. This was a small room in the prison, and the most melancholy in that dwelling of woe, for such indeed, as Cervantes from sad experience knew, and described a Spanish prison to be, it still is. An iron grating formed the part.i.tion of the corridor, which led to the chamber. This pa.s.sage was crowded with members of a charitable brotherhood, who were collecting alms from the visitors, to be expended in ma.s.ses for the eternal repose of the soul of the criminal. There were groups of officers, and of portly Franciscan friars smoking their cigars and looking carefully from time to time into the amount of the contributions, which were to benefit their bodies, quite as much as the soul of the condemned. The levity of those a.s.sembled without formed, meantime, a heartless contrast with the gloom and horror of the melancholy interior. A small door opened into the cell, over which might well be inscribed the awful words of Dante--

"Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate!"

[Sidenote: EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.]

At the head of this room was placed a table, with a crucifix, an image of the Virgin, and two wax tapers, near which stood a silent sentinel with a drawn sword; another soldier was stationed at the door, with a fixed bayonet. In a corner of this darkened apartment was the pallet of Veneno; he was lying curled up like a snake, with a striped coverlet (the Spanish _manta_) drawn closely over his mouth, leaving visible only a head of matted locks, a glistening dark eye, rolling restlessly out of the white socket. On being approached he sprung up and seated himself on a stool: he was almost naked; a chaplet of beads hung across his exposed breast, and contrasted with the iron chains around his limbs:--Superst.i.tion had riveted her fetters at his birth, and the Law her manacles at his death. The expression of his face, though low and vulgar, was one which once seen is not easily forgotten,--a slouching look of more than ordinary guilt: his sallow complexion appeared more cadaverous in the uncertain light, and was heightened by a black, unshorn beard, growing vigorously on a half-dead countenance. He appeared to be reconciled to his fate, and repeated a few sentences, the teaching of the monks, as by rote: his situation was probably more painful to the spectator than to himself--an indifference to death, arising rather from an ignorance of its dreadful import, than from high moral courage: he was the Bernardine of Shakspere, "a man that apprehends death no more dreadfully than a drunken sleep, careless, reckless, and fearless of what's past, present, and to come, insensible of mortality, and desperately mortal."

[Sidenote: EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.]

Next morning the triple tiers of the old balconies, roofs, and whole area of the Moorish and most picturesque square were crowded by the lower orders; the men wrapped up in their cloaks--(it was a December morning)--the women in their mantillas, many with young children in their arms, brought in the beginning of life to witness its conclusion.

The better cla.s.ses not only absent themselves from these executions, but avoid any allusion to the subject as derogatory to European civilization; the humbler ranks, who hold the conventions of society very cheap, give loose to their morbid curiosity to behold scenes of terror, which operates powerfully on the women, who seem impelled irresistibly to witness sights the most repugnant to their nature, and to behold sufferings which they would most dread to undergo; they, like children, are the great lovers of the horrible, whether in a tale or in dreadful reality; to the men it was as a tragedy, where the last scene is death--death which rivets the attention of all, who sooner or later must enact the same sad part.[10] They desire to see how the criminal will conduct himself; they sympathise with him if he displays coolness and courage, and despise him on the least symptom of unmanliness. An open square was then formed about the scaffold by lines of soldiers drawn up, into which the officers and clergy were admitted. As the fatal hour drew nigh, the increasing impatience of the mult.i.tude began to vent itself in complaints of how slowly the time pa.s.sed--that time of no value to them, but of such precious import to him, whose very moments were numbered.

[Sidenote: EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.]

When at length the cathedral clock tolled out the fatal hour, a universal stir of tiptoe expectation took place, a pus.h.i.+ng forward to get the best situations. Still ten minutes had to elapse, for the clock of the tribunal is purposely set so much later than that of the cathedral, in order to afford the utmost possible chance of a reprieve.

When that clock too had rung out its knell, all eyes were turned to the prison-door, from whence the miserable man came forth, attended by some Franciscans. He had chosen that order to a.s.sist at his dying moments, a privilege always left to the criminal. He was clad in a coa.r.s.e yellow baize gown, the colour which denotes the crime of murder, and is appropriated always to Judas Iscariot in Spanish paintings. He walked slowly on his last journey, half supported by those around him, and stopping often, ostensibly to kiss the crucifix held before him by a friar, but rather to prolong existence--sweet life!--even yet a moment.

When he arrived reluctantly at the scaffold, he knelt down on the steps, the threshold of death;--the reverend attendants covered him over with their blue robes--his dying confession was listened to unseen. He then mounted the platform attended by a single friar; addressed the crowd in broken sentences, with a gasping breath--told them that he died repentant, that he was justly punished, and that he forgave his executioner. "Mi delito me mata, y no _ese hombre_,"--my offence puts me to death, and not _this fellow_; as "Ese hombre" is a contemptuous expression, and implies insult, the ruling feeling of the Spaniard was displayed in death against the degraded functionary. The criminal then exclaimed, "_Viva la fe! viva la religion! viva el rey! viva el nombre de Jesus!_" All of which met no echo from those who heard him. His dying cry was "_Viva la Virgen Santisima!_" at these words the devotion to the G.o.ddess of Spain burst forth in one general acclamation, "_Viva la Santisima!_" So strong is their feeling towards the Virgin, and so lukewarm their comparative indifference towards their king, their faith, and their Saviour! Meanwhile the executioner, a young man dressed in black, was busied in the preparations for death. The fatal instrument is simple: the culprit is placed on a rude seat; his back leans against a strong upright post, to which an iron collar is attached, enclosing his neck, and so contrived as to be drawn home to the post by turning a powerful screw. The executioner bound so tightly the naked legs and arms of Veneno, that they swelled and became black--a precaution not unwise, as the father of this functionary had been killed in the act of executing a struggling criminal. The priest who attended Veneno was a bloated, corpulent man, more occupied in shading the sun from his own face, than in his ghostly office; the robber sat with a writhing look of agony, grinding his clenched teeth. When all was ready, the executioner took the lever of the screw in both hands, gathered himself up for a strong muscular effort, and, at the moment of a preconcerted signal, drew the iron collar tight, while an attendant flung a black handkerchief over the face--a convulsive pressure of the hands and a heaving of the chest were the only visible signs of the pa.s.sing of the robber's spirit. After a pause of a few moments, the executioner cautiously peeped under the handkerchief, and after having given another turn to the screw, lifted it off, folded it up, carefully put it into his pocket, and then proceeded to light a cigar

------ "with that air of satisfaction Which good men wear who've done a virtuous action."

[Sidenote: EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.]

The face of the dead man was slightly convulsed, the mouth open, the eye-b.a.l.l.s 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 ma.s.ses 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."

[Sidenote: 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 pract.i.tioners, 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.

[Sidenote: THE SPANISH DOCTOR.]

However magnificently endowed in former times were the hospitals and almshouses of Spain, the provision now made for poor and ailing humanity is very inadequate. The revenues were first embezzled by the managers, and since have almost been swept away. Trustees for pious and charitable uses are defenceless against armed avarice and appropriation in office; and being _corporate_ bodies, they want the sacredness of _private_ interests, which every one is anxious to defend. Hence the greedy minion G.o.doy began the spoliation, by seizing the funds, and giving in lieu government securities, which of course turned out to be worthless. Then ensued the French invasion, and the confiscation of military despots. Civil war has done the rest; and now that the convents are suppressed, the deficiency is more evident, for in the remoter country districts the monks bestowed relief to the poor, and provided medicines for the sick. With few exceptions, the hospitals, the _Casas de Misericordia_, or houses for the dest.i.tute, are far from being well conducted in Spain, while those destined for lunatics, and for exposed children, notwithstanding recent improvements, do little credit to science and humanity.

[Sidenote: HIS SOCIAL POSITION.]

The base, brutal, and b.l.o.o.d.y _Sangrados_ of Spain have long been the b.u.t.ts of foreign and domestic novelists, who spoke many a true word in their jests. The common expression of the people in regard to the busy mortality of their patients, is, that they die like bugs, _mueren como chinches_. This recklessness of life, this inattention to human suffering, and backwardness in curative science, is very Oriental; for, however science may have set westward from the East, the arts of medicine and surgery have not. There, as in Spain, they have long been subordinate, and the professors held to be of a low caste--a fatal bar in the Peninsula, where the point of personal honour is so nice, and men will die rather than submit to conventional degradations. The surgeon of the Spanish Moors was frequently a despised and detested Jew, which would create a traditionary loathing of the calling. The physician was of somewhat a higher caste; but he, like the botanist and chemist, was rather to be met with among the Infidels than the Christians. Thus Sancho the Fat was obliged to go in person to Cordova in search of good advice. And still in Spain, as in the East, all whose profession is to put living creatures to death, are socially almost excommunicated; the butcher, bullfighter, and public executioner for example. Here the soldier who sabres, takes the highest rank, and he who cures, the lowest; here the M.D.'s, whom the infallible Pope consults and the autocrat king obeys, are admitted only into the _sick_ rooms of good company, which, when in rude health, shuts on them the door of their saloons; but the excluded take their revenge on those who morally cut them, and all Spaniards are very dangerous with the knife, and more particularly if surgeons. Madrid is indeed the court of death, and the necrology of the Escorial furnishes the surest evidence of this fact in the premature decease of royalty, which may be expected to have the best advice and aid, both medical and theologico-therapeutical, that the capital can afford; but brief is the royal span, especially in the case of females and _infantes_, and the _result_ is undeniable in these statistics of death; the cause lies between the climate and the doctor, who, as they aid the other, may fairly be left to settle the question of relative excellence between each other.

[Sidenote: THE SPANISH DOCTOR.]

The Spanish medical man is shunned, not only from ancient prejudices, and because he is dangerous like a rattle-snake, but from jealousies that churchmen entertain against a rival profession, which, if well received, might come in for some share of the legacies and power-conferring secrets, which are obtained easily at deathbeds, when mind and body are deprived of strength. Again, a Spanish surgeon and a Spanish confessor take different views of a patient; one only wishes, or ought to wish, to preserve him in this world, the other in the next,--neither probably in their hearts having much opinion of the remedies adopted by each other: the spiritual practice changes not, for novelty itself, a heresy in religion, is not favourably beheld in anything else. Thus the universities, governed by ecclesiastics, persuaded the poor bigot Philip III. to pa.s.s a law prohibiting the study of any _new_ system of medicine, and _requiring_ Galen, Hippocrates, and Avicenna. Dons and men for whom the sun still continued to stand still, scouted the exact sciences and experimental philosophy as dangerous innovations, which, they said, made every medical man a Tiberius, who, because he was fond of mathematics where strict demonstration is necessary, was rather negligent in his religious respect for the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses of the Pantheon; and so, in 1830, they scared the timid Ferdinand VII. (whose resemblance to Tiberius had nothing to do with Euclid) by telling him that the schools of medicine created materialists, heretics, citizen-kings, chartists, barricadoers, and revolutionists. Thereupon the beloved monarch shut up the lecture rooms forthwith, opening, it is true, by way of compensation, a tauromachian university;--men indeed might be mangled, but bulls were to be mercifully put out of their misery, secundum artem, and with the honours of science.

[Sidenote: MEDICAL PRACTICE.]

This low social position is very cla.s.sical: the physicians of Rome, chiefly _liberti_, freed slaves, were only made citizens by Caesar, who wished to _conciliate_ these ministers of the fatal sisters when the capital was wanting in population after extreme emigrations--an act of favour which may cut two ways; thus Adrian VI. (tutor to the Spanish Charles V.) approved of there being 500 medical pract.i.tioners in the Eternal City, because otherwise "the _mult.i.tude_ of living beings would eat each other up." However, when his turn came to be diminished, the grateful people serenaded his surgeon, as the "deliverer of the country." In our days, there was only one medical man admitted by the Seville _sangre su_, the best or n.o.blest set (whose blood is held to be blue, of which more anon) when in rude and antiphlebotomical health; and every stranger was informed apologetically by the exclusive Amphitryons that the M.D. was _de casa conocida_, or born of a good family; thus his social introduction was owing to personal, not professional qualifications. And while adventurers of every kind are bet.i.tled, the most prodigal dispenser of Spanish honours never dreams of making his doctor even a _t.i.tulado_, a rank somewhat higher than a pair de France, and lower than a medical baronetage in England. This aristocratical ban has confined doctors much to each other's society, which, as they never take each other's physic, is neither unpleasant nor dangerous. At Seville the medical _tertulia_, club or meeting, was appropriately held at the apothecary's shop of _Campelos_, and a sable _junta_ or consultation it was, of birds of bad omen, who croaked over the general health with which the city was afflicted, praying, like Sangrado in 'Gil Blas,' that by the blessing of Providence much sickness might speedily ensue. The crowded or deserted state of this rookery was the surest evidence of the hygeian condition of the fair capital of Baetica, and one which, when we lived there, we have often anxiously inspected; for, whatever be the pleasantries of those in insolent health, when sickness brings in the doctor, all joking is at an end; then he is made much of even in Spain, from a choice of evils, and for fear of the confessor and undertaker.

The poor in no countries have much predilection for the hospital; and in Spain, in addition to pride, which everywhere keeps many silly sick out of admirably-conducted asylums, here a well-grounded fear deters the patient, who prefers to die a _natural_ death. Again, from their being poor, the necessity of their living at all, is less evident to the managers than to the sufferers; as, say the Malthusians, there is no place vacant at Nature's _table d'hote_ to those who cannot pay, so bed and board are not pressed on Spanish applicants, by the hospital committee; an admitted patient's death saves trouble and expense, neither of which are popular in a land where cash is scarce, and a love for hard work not prevalent, where a sound man is worth little, and a sick one still less; nor is every doctor always popular for working cures, as could be exemplified in sundry cases of Spanish wives and heirs in general; therefore in the hospitals of the Peninsula, if only half die, it is thought great luck: the dead, moreover, tell no tales, and the living sing praises for their miraculous escape. _El medico lleva la plata, pero Dios es que sana!_--G.o.d works the cure, the doctor sacks the fee! Meanwhile the s.e.xtons are busy and merry, as those in Hamlet, and as indeed all gravediggers are, when they have a job on hand that will be paid for; deeply do they dig into the silent earth, that bourn from whence no travellers return to blab. They sing and jest, while dust is heaped on dust, and the _corpus delicti_ covered, and with it the blunders of the _medico_; thus all parties, the deceased excepted, are well satisfied; the man with the lancet is content that disagreeable evidence should be put out of sight, the fellow-labourer with the spade is thankful that constant means of living should be afforded to him; and when the funeral is over, both carry out the proverbial practice of Peninsular survivors: _Los muertos en la huesa, y los vivos a la mesa_, the dead in their grave, the quick to their dinner.

[Sidenote: MEDICAL ABUSES.]

But at no period were Spaniards careful even of their own lives, and much less of those of others, being a people of untender bowels.

Familiarity with pain blunts much of the finer feelings of persons employed even in our hospitals, for those who live by the dead have only an undertaker's sympathy for the living, and are as dull to the poetry of innocent health, as Mr. Giblet is to a sportive house-fed lamb.

Matters are not improved in Spain, where the wounds, blood, and slaughterings of the pastime bull-fight, the _mueran_ or death mob-cries, and _pasele por las armas_, the shoot him on the spot, the Draco and Durango decrees, and practices of all in power, educate all s.e.xes to indifference to blood; thus the fatal knife-stab or surgeon's cut are viewed as _cosas de Espana_ and things of course. The philosophy of the general indifference to life in Spain, which almost amounts to Oriental fatalism, in the number of executions and general resignation to bloodshed, arises partly from life among the many being at best but a struggle for existence; thus in setting it in the cast, the player only stakes coppers, and when one is removed, there is somewhat less difficulty for survivors; hence every one is for himself and for to-day; apres moi le deluge, _el ultimo mono se ahoga_, the last monkey is drowned, or as we say, the devil takes the hindmost.

[Sidenote: MEDICAL ABUSES.]

The neglect of well-supported, well-regulated hospitals, has recoiled on the Spaniards. The rising profession are deprived of the advantages of _walking_ them, and thus beholding every nice difficulty solved by experienced masters. Recently some efforts have been made in large towns, especially on the coasts, to introduce reforms and foreign ameliorations; but official jobbing and ignorant routine are still among the diseases that are _not_ cured in Spain. In 1811, when the English army was at Cadiz, a physician, named Villarino, urged by some of our indignant surgeons, brought the disgraceful condition of Spanish hospitals before the Cortes. A commission was appointed, and their sad report, still extant, details how the funds, food, wine, &c., destined for the patients were consumed by the managers and their subalterns. The results were such as might be expected; the authorities held together, and persecuted Villarino as a _revolucionario_, or reformer, and succeeded in disgracing him. The superintendent of this establishment was the notorious Lozano de Torres, who starved the English army after Talavera, and was "a thief and a liar," in the words of the Duke. The Regency, after this very exposure of his hospital, promoted him to the civil government of Old Castile; and Ferdinand VII., in 1817, made him Minister of Justice.

As buildings, the hospitals are generally very large; but the s.p.a.ce is as thinly tenanted as the unpeopled wastes of Spain. In England wards are wanting for patients--in Spain, patients for wards. The names of some of the greatest hospitals are happily chosen; that of Seville, for instance, is called _La Sangre_, the blood, or _Las Cinco Llagas_, the five bleeding wounds of our Saviour, which are sculptured over the portal like bunches of grapes. Blood is an ominous name for this house and home of _Sangrado_, where the lancet, like the Spanish knife, gives no quarter. In instruments of life and death, this establishment resembled a Spanish a.r.s.enal, being wanting in everything at the critical moment; its dispensary, as in the shop of Shakspere's apothecary, presented a beggarly account of empty pill-boxes, while as to a visiting Brodie, the part of that Hamlet was left out. The grand hospital at Madrid is called _el general_, the General, and the medical a.s.sistance is akin to the military co-operation of such Spanish generals as Lapena and Venegas, who in the moment of need left Graham at Barrosa, and the Duke at Talavera, without a shadow of aid. There is nothing new in this, if the old proverb tells truth, _socorros de Espana, o tarde o nunca_; Spanish succours arrive late or never. In cases of battle, war, and sudden death as in peace, the professional men, military or medical, are apt to a.s.sist in the meaning of the French word _a.s.sister_, which signifies to be present without taking any part in what is going on. And this applies, where knocks on the head are concerned, not to the medical men only, but to the universal Spanish nation; when any one is stabbed in the streets, he will infallibly bleed to death, unless the authorities arrive in time to pick him up, and to bind up his wounds: every one else--Englishmen excepted, we describe things witnessed--pa.s.ses on the other side; not from any fear at the sight of blood, nor abhorrence of murder, but from the dread which every Spaniard feels at the very idea of getting entangled in the meshes of _La Justicia_, whose ministers lay hold of all who interfere or are near the body as princ.i.p.als or witnesses, and Spanish justice, if once it gets a man into its fangs, never lets him go until drained of his last farthing.

[Sidenote: COLLEGE OF SAN CARLOS.]

The schools and hospitals, especially in the inland remote cities, are very deficient in all improved mechanical appliances and modern discoveries, and the few which are to be met with are mostly of French and second-rate manufacture. It is much the same with their medical treatises and technical works; all is a copy, and a bad one; it has been found to be much easier to translate and borrow, than to invent; therefore, as in modern art and literature, there is little originality in Spanish medicine. It is chiefly a veneering of other men's ideas, or an adaptation of ancient and Moorish science. Most of their terms of medicinal art, as well as of drugs, _jalea_, _elixir_, _jarave_, _rob_, _sorbete_, _julepe_, &c., are purely Arabic, and indicate the sources from whence the knowledge was obtained, for there is no surer historical test than language of the origin from whence the knowledge of the science was derived with its phraseology; and whenever Spaniards depart from the daring ways of their ancestors, it is to adopt a timid French system. The few additions to their medical libraries are translations from their neighbours, just as the scanty materia medica in their apothecaries' shops is rendered more dangerous and ineffective by quack nostrums from Paris. It is a serious misfortune to sanative science in the Peninsula, that all that is known of the works of thoughtful, careful Germany, of practical, decided England, is pa.s.sed through the unfair, inaccurate alembic of French translation; thus the original becomes doubly deteriorated, and the sacred cosmopolitan cause of truth and fact is too often sacrificed to the Gallic mania of suppressing both, for the honour of their own country. Can it be wondered, therefore, that the acquaintance of the Spanish faculty with modern works, inventions, and operations is very limited, or that their text-books and authorities should too often be still Galen, Celsus, Hippocrates, and Boerhaave? The names of Hunter, Harvey, and Astley Cooper, are scarcely more known among their M.D.'s than the last discoveries of Herschel; the light of such distant planets has not had time to arrive.

[Sidenote: LUNATIC ASYLUMS.]