hiss. I thought to myself: “If you are dead, it will raise you from the grave, if you are alive, it will send you there.” Of course, that was a completely unfounded outburst of superstition, stimulated by the powerful and exotic qualities of that vigorous substance.
The man was saved! He soon came to his senses, his breathing normalized, and he even answered questions by nodding his head.
The doctor turned to the others, whose stupefaction is impossible to describe. “He’ll recover. He needs to keep to bed and recover his strength, and he’ll be on his feet in a week.”
Tired, but satisfied by a job well done, we climbed into our carriage and set off back to Sevilla. It had grown late, the sun was already setting behind the naked hills of Andalusia.
“Night is falling,” the doctor said.
“Yes, night is falling,” I nodded. At such a moment, one feels the urge to gaze at and revel in “the beauty of nature,” as they say. But what beauty? Sloping hills covered with grass yellowed by autumn, here and there scrawny olive groves, the red sun up above amidst a darkening sky the color of pale indigo, peeking through a grayish veil—if I may put it like this, the dirt road ahead with its brown dust and small half-unearthed colorless stones. What disconsolate grayness, what boredom, what ugliness and what tiresome monotony! . . . It was only then that I realized what had happened!
“Señor,” I said. “We just raised a man from the dead! We saved him!”
“Well, he’ll die again,” Dr. Monardes smiled. “Only some other time.”
How modesty adorns a man! You’ll never catch Dr. Monardes getting puffed up over his unbelievable achievements, you’ll never see him wallowing in self-satisfaction like a pig in the mud. No, he is always disciplined, businesslike, with brisk, energetic movements, careful, on his guard, concentrated yet calm at the same time. An inimitable physician! What luck I had to stumble across such a teacher. And so on.
2.
Intestinal Worms, Enemas
Is it even necessary to continue after such a strong example? Yes and no. No, because the previous example was extraordinarily and definitively illustrative—such a powerful substance, which can raise someone from the dead, obviously needs no further arguments in its defense. And yes, for two reasons: first, if I do not continue, this composition would become impossible, which I personally would find very upsetting. My career path clearly passes through it. And second, it is advisable to indicate other, more mundane examples, which nevertheless will be of use to the reader so that he may learn how to employ the powerful substance of tobacco in his everyday life, and not only when he dies. After all, a man doesn’t die every day, he’s not a fly. Rather, he struggles with other, often tiresome and shameful, yet nevertheless vexing, problems and indispositions. And ceaselessly at that, I would say.
In his young years, when he was still trying to build his practice and thus save himself from the terrifying and deadly trap of poverty, from which perhaps even tobacco cannot save you and which usually hangs like the Sword of Damocles over every young person’s head, Dr. Monardes specialized in a particularly widespread illness—intestinal worms. A huge number of children in Spain suffer from worms. More even than in Portugal. Here worms afflict both the rich and the poor, absolutely everyone. This, of course, is due to poor hygiene. No one washes his hands except before prayer. Some, by the way, also wash them after prayer, it must be admitted.
My point is that Dr. Monardes was exceptionally specialized in the healing of worms and hence became an exceptional specialist. His name as a master in curing this illness became known far and wide in Sevilla, all of Andalusia, certain regions of Portugal, and even in the north all the way to Asturias and the Basque country, where it spread, albeit in a changed form and was known as Masañas, transforming as it was passed by word of mouth. Rely on what people say and look what happens! But to return to our topic:
And so, Dr. Monardes made his name in worms and established a prospering practice. Actually, prosperity is often founded on some such thing. His wealth dates back to that time, and even to this day it is based on the curing of that illness, and not the doctor’s numerous, far more serious medical achievements. It could be said that Dr. Monardes’ wealth is shored up by worms, that he has turned worms to gold. And since there are many worms in this country, the doctor’s gold is also abundant. “If you want to get rich,” the doctor says, “take up something small that everyone uses or which everyone suffers from, but which few produce or cure. Worms, spices, and the like. Only fools throw themselves into grand undertakings and call their foolishness pluck.”
Petty things for a petty world, so to speak. But getting back to my original thought.
Many years later, when I was already studying with the doctor, he was called by the king himself, Don Felipe II, whose son, the future Felipe III, had come down with a case of worms. It was then that I saw the Escorial Palace for the first time. Some say it is the ugliest large building in the world, while others argue the opposite, i.e. that it is the largest ugly building in the world. In my opinion, both sides are right. As soon as I saw it from a distance, my soul felt oppressed and cringed like a wet cat. I had never seen anything like it—it resembled a giant prison with a parade entrance. And to complete the absurdity, statues of the Jewish kings had been erected over the entrance, with David and Solomon in the middle. And this by the same man who so cruelly persecuted the Jews, which only confirms my conviction that we have a madman as king. His appearance strengthened this impression—with the Bible which he supposedly never lets slip from his hand, with a huge gold cross around his neck, and in his royal robes, he looked like the embodiment of un-combinable things, like a cross between fish and fowl. And just as dangerous, in a certain sense.
Although the palace looked quite severe on the outside, inside it was luxuriously furnished and its walls frescoed. The Catholic rulers lived well.
They sent us to the boy. When we entered little Felipe’s chambers, we caught him scratching his backside. Many believe that he later went mad, and if this is the case, I suspect it might be due to some extent to our encounter. Dr. Monardes decided to use not the usual, but instead an elite, tobacco treatment on him, one fit for a kingly personage. To this end, we made an infusion from tobacco leaves, as well as tobacco syrup. We smeared Felipe’s navel with the syrup and gave him the infusion to drink. He vomited, but Dr. Monardes said this was a good sign, as the tobacco had obviously begun cleansing his organism, and made him drink some more. After that, in order for the treatment to be both maximally effective and quick, he decided to give the boy an enema. For this purpose I had to insert a small glass tube into his backside.
“Ouch!” Felipe groaned.
“That’s enough ouching!” I said, rather peeved with a view to the following procedure I had to perform, which I will describe presently. But then a quick thought flashed through my mind, so I continued: “Your majesty, the ruler of the largest empire in the world cannot be moaning and groaning. He must be brave and strong.”
The boy looked at me and nodded. “What a fool!” I thought to myself. I am not particularly fond of children. Still less I like the spoiled little monsters from royal courts. And still less if they have worms. And especially if I must insert a glass tube into their backsides and blow tobacco smoke into it, so as to cleanse their bowels from the inside, as was required for the procedure I was faced with. The persistent thought that some worm might crawl through the tube and into my mouth kept running through my head. Yet loyal to my duties, I lit a cigarella and began exhaling tobacco fumes into the tube, blowing as hard as I could so they would not come back out. At the same time, the doctor gave young Felipe a bit more of the infusion, so as to attack the worms from both ends. This raised my misgivings to the level of acute alarm, as I imagined what
