shut up the breast.
This opinion seems to have partly originated from a notion, once entertained by the doctors, that acids coagulate the animal fluids, and so produce obstructions and disease. It is made evident to our senses, that milk secreted from the blood is readily coagulated by acids; and thus they seem to conceive that something of the same process takes place in the circulating fluids of the body when acids are taken into the system.
Not only the vulgar, but some of the professional characters, appear to be impressed with the notion that the blood is thickened or curdled by acids, whether mineral or vegetable; and that the delicate circulation of the lungs is consequently impeded, and the respiratory pores clogged. This opinion appears to be expressed in the very common remark, “El enfermo tomo fresco de lemon, y con el acido se le ha tupido el pecho,” which means that the patient drank cold lemonade, and with the acid the breast was stopped up.
We are well persuaded that there are instances, especially among delicate females, where the respiratory organs are so susceptible of impressions, that the immediate refrigerating effects of cool acidulated drinks on the stomach of such persons extend rapidly, by sympathy, from the stomach to the surface of the body and lungs; and there produce a certain degree of constriction on the exhaling vessels, which disturbs their healthy action.
It is only in this manner we can account for the fact, as frequently stated to us by patients, that, as certainly as they did take anything cool and acidulated, they were speedily affected with a tightness about the chest, and felt as if they had actually caught cold. On such occasions their usual observation was, “El acido me ha cerrado el pecho,”—the acid has locked or closely shut the breast.
A complicated ailment which is vulgarly conceived to be seated in the chest, is often met with in Lima during the sultry months of January, February, and March. It is attended with a short and dry cough, a foul tongue, and evening fever, or restlessness, that chases away sleep. The patient becomes low-spirited and anxious; and dreads an approaching attack of consumption, or spitting of blood.
In such disorders, the gastric and hepatic functions may be suspected of some irregularity; and, when in any case this is explained to the patient, the disease may be treated as one seated in the organs of digestion, and frescos or cooling acidulated drinks often do wonders. Not only diluted in cold water, but with the addition of ice, the various vegetable acids of the season are given with the best results. They break up the whole chain of morbid symptoms; and the patient, thus encouraged and refreshed, completes convalescence by cold sea-bathing, and a few weeks’ residence at the neat village of Mira-flores, a few miles from the capital.
Throughout the entire year, but more particularly during the warmer months, great use, and no small abuse, is made of all sorts of frescos, or cooling and acidulated drinks, with or without the addition of ice, and other ingredients of a very opposite nature, as pimento and spices, which latter render the same drink heating to the stomach, that, by ice, is rendered cool on the lip.
There are no beverages which the vulgar misapply more than their frescos. The most approved of these, as tamarinds and whey, or the juice of the apple and quince, &c. diffused in water and sweetened with sugar, are sometimes so long continued with a view of cooling and purifying the blood, that they finally relax and weaken the stomach; of which there are heard many complaints. Again, iced water, or iced acidulated frescos, are frequently misapplied in the common acute diseases of the country when the patients are in a free sweat; for, by suddenly checking a salutary perspiration, very bad consequences may follow: but this, though a well-known fact, is too often overlooked.
VIII. Acido sobre la leche es malo.—It is particularly worthy of notice that, shortly before or after milk happens to be taken pure as a drink, or mixed up in some culinary form as an article of diet, it is believed that no acid can be safely received into the stomach; it being thought necessary that the interval between these incompatible ingredients should be seven hours at least.
In illustration of the fact here stated, it may be mentioned that we were once called to see a lady in Lima who had been ailing for about a twelvemonth; and, on inquiring why she had delayed her cure so long, her reply was—
“A year ago, on my arrival from Valparaiso, I called in Dr. ——, a French physician, who ordered me to confine myself to a rice and milk diet alternated with lemonade. I felt so greatly shocked at this gentleman’s extraordinary error in prescribing such treatment, which every one knows to be most hurtful, not only to the infirm, but to the sound and healthy, that I resolved at the time to leave my complaints to nature, rather than expose my life to the greater indiscretion of some other doctor of less fame.”
In this instance the error, for which the French physician was blamed, consisted in his having overlooked the popular rule universal in Peru, and probably not unknown in Chile, that “acido sobre la leche es malo,” viz. that acid after milk is hurtful.
According to this rule in Peruvian dietetics, it would be considered little short of poisonous to use milk or cream with any sort of fruit, jam, or preserve containing the least quantity of acid. And here it may be noticed, that in their own preserves, they completely destroy the rich and distinguishing flavour of the fruit by an excess of sugar, just as they annihilate, in very bad taste, the peculiar and natural fragrance of their finest flowers by sprinkling upon them foreign and artificial perfumes.
IX. Los olores son malos para las recien paridas.—It is one of the social customs of Peru, sometimes attended with great inconvenience, that friends and visitors, moved by feelings of kindness, crowd into the rooms of the sick, when not perhaps in a fit state to enjoy company or conversation.
During their confinement ladies are not sufficiently exempted from this friendly intrusion, or neighbourly attention. The only restraint imposed upon those who visit a lady on such an occasion is, that they do not enter her apartment with flowers or perfumes; nor are the attendants permitted to introduce censers with the fumes of burning incense, as is customary at other times. Thus, it is acknowledged that “Los olores son malos para las recien paridas,” viz. that perfumes are injurious to women during their confinement; and they certainly are so, for they are frequently observed to give rise to fainting, convulsions, or other bad consequences. These precautions all who visit or wait upon the sick are strict in observing; and so much the more, as it is customary for females in every rank to use perfumes on their dress, and to decorate their heads with flowers for evening visits: a practice in which the woolly-haired negress and mulatta greatly excel, as they love to adorn their stunted curls with flowers of aroma and jessamine.
Parturient women are very subject to a sensation of languor and exhaustion at stomach, attended with a feeling of faintness, which they call “fatiga.” On ordinary occasions, when this feeling or sensation is experienced by females not similarly situated, it is usual to resort to cordials and odoriferous draughts containing lavender, hartshorn, &c. and also to stimulating embrocations applied over the seat of the stomach, which usually consist of a camphorated mixture, or perhaps Cologne water, and other such remedies applied in common cases of weakness and faintness referred to the stomach; but, under the circumstances to which our rule refers, all applications of this sort are inadmissible.
When there is a feeling of sickness and faintness, with a disconsolate sensation (called “un desconsuelo”) at the epigastrium or scrobiculus cordis, they are allowed on all occasions to apply to the stomach, as a popular remedy with the matrons, a bit of warm toast, or the breast of a fowl sprinkled over with powdered cinnamon and moistened with wine, or, as it is vernacularly expressed, “la pechuga de gallina con vino y canela;” and they agree that this application, which possesses a great deal of their confidence, commonly produces the best effects.
X. Tomar agua fria encima de colera.—To drink cold water immediately after a fit of anger, which is the meaning of the words
