Part 15 (1/2)

To this day the _Colegio de San Carlos_, or the College of Surgeons at Madrid, relies much on teaching the obstetric art by means of wax preparations; but learning a trade on paper is not confined in Spain to medical students; the great naval school at Seville is dedicated to San Telmo, who, uniting in himself the attributes of the ancient Castor and Pollux, appears in storms at the mast-head in the form of lights to rescue seamen. Hence, whenever it comes on to blow, the pious crews of Spanish crafts fall on their knees, and depend on this marine Hercules, instead of taking in sail, and putting the helm up. Our tars, who love the sea _propter se_, for better for worse, having no San Telmo to help them in foul weather (although the somewhat irreverent gunner of the Victory did call him of Trafalgar Saint Nelson), go to work and perform the miracle themselves--_aide toi, et le ciel t'aidera_. In our time, the middies in this college were taught navigation in a room, from a small model of a three-decker placed on a large table; and thus at least they were not exposed to sea-sickness. The Infant Antonio, Lord High Admiral of Spain, was walking in the Retiro gardens near the pond, when it was proposed to cross in a boat; he declined, saying, ”Since I sailed from Naples to Spain I have never ventured on water.” But, in this and some other matters, things are managed differently on the Thames and the Baetis. Thus, near Greenwich Hospital, a floating frigate, large as life, is the school of young chips of old blocks, who every day behold in the veterans of Cape St. Vincent and Trafalgar living examples of having ”done their duty.” The evidence of former victories thus becomes a guarantee for the realization of their young hopes, and the future is a.s.sured by the past.

[Sidenote: LUNATIC ASYLUMS.]

Next to the barracks, prisons, a.r.s.enals, and fortresses of Spain, the establishments for suffering mortality are the least worth seeing, and are the most to be avoided by wise travellers, who can indulge in much better specimens at home. This a.s.sertion will be better understood by a sketch or two taken on the spot a few years ago. The so-called asylums for lunatics are termed in Spanish hospitales de _locos_, a word derived from the Arabic, _locao_, mad; they, like the cognate Morostans (????) of Cairo, were generally so mismanaged, that the directors appeared to be only desirous of obtaining admission themselves. Insanity seemed to derange both the intellects of the patients and to harden the bowels of their attendants, while the usual misappropriation of the scanty funds produced a truly reckless, makes.h.i.+ft, wretched result. There was no attempt at _cla.s.sification_, which indeed is no thing of Spain. The inmates were crowded together,--the monomaniac, the insane, the raving mad,--in one confusion of dirt and misery, where they howled at each other, chained like wild beasts, and were treated even worse than criminals, for the pa.s.sions of the most outrageous were infuriated by the savage lash. There was not even a curtain to conceal the sad necessities of these human beings, then reduced to animals: everything was public even unto death, whose last groan was mingled with the frantic laugh of the surviving spectators. In some rare cases the bodies of those whose minds are a void, were confined in solitary cells, with no other companions save affliction. Of these, many, when first sent there by friends and relations to be put out of the way, were _not_ mad, soon indeed to become so, as solitude, sorrow, and the iron entered their brain. These establishments, which the natives ought to hide in shame, were usually among the first lions which they forced on the stranger, and especially on the Englishman, since, holding our worthy countrymen to be all _locos_, they naturally imagined that they would be quite at home among the inmates.

They, in common with many others on the Continent, entertain a notion that all Britons bold have a bee in their bonnet; they think so on many, and perhaps not always unreasonable, grounds. They see them preferring English ways, sayings, and doings, to their own, which of itself appears to a Spaniard, as to a Frenchman, to be downright insanity. Then our countrymen tell the truth in bulletins, use towels, and remove superfluous hairs daily. And letting alone other minor exhibitions of eccentricity, are not the natives of England, Scotland, and Ireland guilty of three actions, any one of which would qualify for Bedlam if the Lord Chancellor were to issue a writ _de lunatico inquiriendo_?--have they not bled for Spain, in purse and person, on the battlefield, on the railroad, in the Stock Exchange?--

”Oh tribus Antyceris caput insanabile!”

[Sidenote: 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 princ.i.p.al 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 ma.s.sacred, 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.”

[Sidenote: 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 defait par un crime a 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 cla.s.ses, 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, pa.s.s 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.

[Sidenote: FOUNDLING HOSPITAL AT SEVILLE.]

There is always a supply of wet nurses at the _Cuna_, but they are generally such as from bad character cannot obtain situations in private families; the usual allotment was three children to one nurse.

Sometimes, when a respectable woman is looking out for a place as wet-nurse, and is anxious not to lose her breast of milk, she goes, in the meanwhile, to the _Cuna_, when the poor child who draws it off plumps up a little, and then, when the supply is withdrawn, withers and dies. The appointed nurses dole out their milk, not according to the wants of the infants, but to make it do for their number. Some few are farmed out to poor mothers who have lost their own babe; they receive about eight s.h.i.+llings a month, and these are the children which have the best chance of surviving, for no woman who has been a mother, and has given suck, will willingly, when left alone, let an infant die. The nurses of the _Cuna_ were familiar with starvation, and even if their milk of human kindness were not dried up or soured, they have not the means of satisfying their hungry number. The proportion who died was frightful; it was indeed an organized system of infanticide. Death is a mercy to the child, and a saving to the establishment; a grown-up man's life never was worth much in Spain, much less that of a deserted baby.

The exposure of children to immediate death by the Greeks and Romans, was a trifle less cruel than the protracted dying in these Spanish charnel-houses. This _Cuna_, when last we visited it, was managed by an inferior priest, who, a true Spanish unjust steward, misapplied the funds. He became rich, like Gil Blas's overseer at Valladolid, by taking care of the property of the poor and fatherless; his well-garnished quarters and portly self were in strange contrast with the condition of his wasted charges. Of these, the sick and dying were separated from the healthy; the former were placed in a large room, once the saloon of state, whose gilded roof and fair proportions mocked the present misery.

The infants were laid in rows on dirty mattresses along on the floor, and were left unheeded and unattended. Their large heads, shrivelled necks, hollow eyes, and wax wan figures, were shadowed with coming death. Called into existence by no wish or fault of their own, their brief span was run out ere begun, while their mother was far away exclaiming, ”When I have sufficiently wept for his birth, I will weep for his death.”

[Sidenote: FOUNDLING HOSPITAL AT SEVILLE.]

Those who were more healthy lay paired in cradles arranged along a vast room; but famine was in their cheeks, need starved in their eyes, and their shrill cry pained the ear on pa.s.sing the threshold; from their being underfed, they were restless and ever moaning. Their existence has indeed begun with a sob, with _El primer sollozo de la Cuna_, the first sigh of the cradle, as Rioja says, but all cry when entering the world, while many leave it with smiles. Some, the newly exposed, just parted from their mother's breast, having sucked their last farewell, looked plump and rosy; they slept soundly, blind to the future, and happily unconscious of their fate.

About one in twelve survived to idle about the hospital, ill clad, ill fed, and worse taught. The boys were destined for the army, the girls for domestic service, nay, for worse, if public report did not wrong their guardian priest. They grew up to be selfish and unaffectionate; having never known what kindness was, their young hearts closed ere they opened; ”the world was not their friend, nor the world's law.” It was on their heads that the barber learned to shave, and on them were visited the sins of their parents; having had none to care for them, none to love, they revenged themselves by hating mankind. Their occupation consisted in speculating on who their parents may be, and whether they should some day be reclaimed and become rich. A few occasionally are adopted by benevolent and childless persons, who, visiting the _Cuna_, take a fancy to an interesting infant; but the child is liable ever after to be given up to its parents, should they reclaim it. Townshend mentions an Oriental custom at Barcelona, where the girls when marriageable were paraded in procession through the streets, and any desirous of taking a wife was at liberty to select his object by ”throwing his handkerchief.” This Spanish custom still prevails at Naples.

Such was the _Cuna_ of Seville when we last beheld it. It is now, as we have recently heard with much pleasure, admirably conducted, having been taken in charge by some benevolent ladies, who here as elsewhere are the best nurses and guardians of man in his first or second infancy, not to say of every intermediate stage.

[Sidenote: MEDICAL PRETENSIONS.]

Our readers will concur in deeming that wight unfortunate who falls ill in Spain, as, whatever be his original complaint, it is too often followed by secondary and worse symptoms, in the shape of the native doctor; and if the judgment pa.s.sed by Spaniards on that member of society be true, Esculapius cannot save the invalid from the crows; the faculty even at Madrid are little in advance of their provincial colleagues, nay, often they are more destructive, since, being pract.i.tioners in the only court, the heaven on earth, they are in proportion superior to the medical men of the rest of the world, of whom of course they can learn nothing. They are, however, at least a century behind their brother professors of England. An unreasonable idea of self-excellence arises both in nations and in individuals, from having no knowledge of the relative merits of others, and from having few grounds or materials whereon to raise comparison; it exists therefore the strongest among the most uninformed and those who mix the least in the world. Thus in spite of manifold deficiencies, some of which will be detailed, the self-esteem of these medical men exceeds, if possible, that of the military; both have killed their ”ten thousands.” They hold themselves to be the first _sabreurs_, physicians, and surgeons on earth, and the best qualified to wield the shears of the Parcae. It would be a waste of time to try to dispel this fatal delusion; the well-intentioned monitor would simply be set down as malevolent, envious, and an a.s.s; for they think their ignorance the perfection of human skill. Few foreigners can ever hope to succeed among them, nor can any native who may have studied abroad, easily introduce a better system: his elder brethren would make common cause against him as an innovator; he would be summoned to no consultations, the most lucrative branch of practice, while the confessors would poison the ears of the women (who govern the men) with cautions against the danger to their souls, of having their bodies cured by a Jew, a heretic, or a foreigner, for the terms are almost convertible.

[Sidenote: MEDICAL EDUCATION.]

Meanwhile, as in courts of justice and other matters in Spain, all sounds admirably on _paper_--the forms, regulations, and system are perfect in theory. Colleges of physicians and surgeons superintend the science, the professors are members of infinite learned societies, lectures are delivered, examinations are conducted, and certificates duly signed and sealed, are given. The young _Galenista_ is furnished with a licence to kill, but what is wanting from beginning to end, to pract.i.tioner and patient, is _life_. The medical men know, nevertheless, every aphorism of the ancients by rote, and _discourse_ as eloquently and plausibly on any case as do their ministers in Cortes. Both write capital theories and opinions extemporaneously. Their splendid language supplies words which seem to have cost thought. What is deficient is that clinical and best of education where the case is brought before the student with the corollary of skilful treatment: _accidental_ deaths are consequently more common than cures.