A medical junta in Lima is commonly continued morning and evening, and from day to day, till the patient is pronounced to be out of danger. As the junta breaks up after each separate meeting, it is customary for the president of the meeting, or one of the physicians, to say, as he leaves his seat, “Vamos a consolar al enfermo,”—Let us go to console the patient; and then all the doctors present re-enter the patient’s apartment to soothe and to console him; and after this one of the number steps forward to lay down the regimen—“a dar el regimen”—agreed upon in consultation, and which one or more nurses and attendants are now ready to receive from the mouth of the physician. After the formality of a junta is thought no longer necessary, it often happens that, by wish of the patient or his relatives, two or more of the medical advisers return at separate hours, but by mutual agreement, for several days, by way of further security to the sick, or as a source of satisfaction to his family.
After all the care possible bestowed on the part of doctors, it often happens that, when the patient recovers, San Antonio, or any other saint after whom the individual is named, has all the credit of the cure; but, when the case is unprosperous, then all the evil is ascribed to human agency.
In Lima, as elsewhere, it will readily enough be admitted in general terms that all must die; but regarding this proposition, when death strikes any one in particular, difficulties at once suggest themselves; for the surviving friends are ever ready to assign many reasons why they are quite sure the deceased might have escaped, had it not been for this or that physician that misunderstood his malady. Hence it may be said that it is only in well-regulated juntas, and in public hospitals, that the people of Lima are supposed to glide to their latter end by fair and natural means. Upon this subject we heard it remarked by a sagacious native, “Should a gambler lose at a cock-fight, he does not attribute the loss to any fault in the cock, but to some trick done to him; if a horse lose in a race, his owner never acknowledges the cause of the failure to be in the animal, but assigns it to some accident thrown in his way: and surely, when we know that on such comparatively trivial occasions men thus talk and think, it is but natural for them, in an affair of such moment and interest as life itself, never to believe that a friend or relative loses his existence from any fault of his own, or any defect in his organization, but rather that his demise should be charged, as we see it is, though often unjustly, on the blind and stumbling ignorance, or unpardonable carelessness and indifference of the physicians.”
One common consequence of this mode of thinking is, that, by a single fatal case in practice, all the former success of the practitioner is overlooked, at least for a time; from which it follows that various medical advisers are sure to replace one another often in those families where death is a frequent visitor.
We seldom meet in families that shyness or reserve in divulging bodily ailments which can render them reluctant to change their family physician; and no physician, though specially entrusted with a patient, can be sure that others of the profession do not, at secret interviews, tamper with his peculiar treatment. This baneful custom leads to professional jealousies and mutual distrust. We believe many families countenance it from motives of consideration for the doctor ostensibly in trust, whose self-love they propose to spare by this clandestine practice, when they think a more open manner of proceeding would be repulsive to his feelings. There is, however, another very obvious reason which lends its influence to this furtive system of visiting the sick; and it is, that by this means the opinion of several advisers may be had at comparatively little expense. Should only two individuals be called to meet at the bedside of the patient at an appointed hour to consult on his case, the meeting is a bonâ fide junta, and each member of it is entitled to his four or four and a half dollars; whereas the single visits are only valued at one dollar each, and such detached visits are in many instances not paid by the sick, but by the friends at whose request the professional calls are made. Here then is great economy; eight opinions (and if the patient be poor, so that he is only expected to pay a half dollar fee for a detached visit, sixteen opinions) may be procured for the standard price of two when given in consultation; and custom, as well as reason and prudence, require that several opinions should be taken in cases of hazard and difficulty.
Owing in a considerable degree to the comparative poverty of the present times, medical juntas are by no means so frequent as they used to be; but yet it is a common saying on serious occasions, where the assistance of more than one medical adviser is thought necessary, that more is seen by four eyes than by two.—“Mas se ve con cuatro ojos que con dos.” By multiplying skill according to this rule, a score of eyes may be assembled in one junta to search into the patient’s obscure malady, so as to point out the cause and the remedy; or, if there should be no other alternative, let him die according to rule.
CHAPTER V.
Condition of Slave population, and its influence on the family economy and moral sentiments of the European race.
Such is the influence which slave domestics exercise over the feelings and comfort of private families, and, we would even add, over the moral and physical features of the community, that it would be impossible to give a correct picture of the state of society in Lima without first cursorily viewing the condition of the slave population in Peru.
In article 152 of the Political Constitution of the Republic of Peru, it is declared that no one is born a slave in the republic, neither does any one enter from other countries who is not left free when he treads on Peruvian soil. Should any Peruvian be found guilty of importing slaves into the republic for the purposes of traffic, the constitution declares that he shall be deprived of his rights of citizenship. But the internal traffic of slaves still continues, though it is confined to buying and selling such slaves as existed in the country before the war of independence began, or to such of their offspring as were born before the year 1820, when Peru was no longer the acknowledged patrimony of Spaniards. With respect to the mere exterior appearance of negroes born in Peru of African parents, it is observed that they are influenced by the bleaching effects which the climate of the Peruvian coast is known to produce on the ruddy sons of our northern climes who reside for any length of time in Lima. The native negro therefore is lighter in colour, and possessed of finer, more expressive, and much more regular features than the jet-black and lacerated “Bozals” or African-born blacks, on whose countenance and breast are commonly seen deep and hideous scars that bespeak at once their more barbarous origin and their foreign importation.
The orderly discipline of the “Galpon,” or slave-barracks, appears, from the acknowledgments of the natives themselves, to have been very creditable to the humanity of the slave-holders in the days of Spanish sway over them—a time when slaves are said to have shared in the felicity of their masters. Leniently dealt with, and in the abundant fruition of animal gratifications, they felt themselves happy, and forgot that they were not free.
The patriot legislators have enacted that it is illegal for any master to apply the whip or scourge, “azote,” in chastising his slave. The ordinary mode of punishment in the capital is to send the offender for correction to a “panaderia” or bakehouse, where his labour is increased or mitigated according to his conduct while there. In most ancient families, who have yet preserved sufficient fortune to allow them to keep up some retinue, we find a number of slave attendants whose progenitors served in the same family of distinction for a long series of years; and thus a mutual attachment has grown up between the parties, that makes them view each other with that sort of interest which we observe between masters and old servants at home. It is not unusual for a master on his death-bed to reward the fidelity of a faithful slave by granting him his liberty; and we have witnessed some very touching instances of gratitude shown by well-educated white women towards those female slaves, or, we might say, devoted friends, on whose willing services