608 The Andes and the Amazons. 



for months, sometimes. When they become mature, the 

 amount of pus which is discharged from them is some- 

 times ahnost incredible. Those who are subject to these 

 drains on the system frequently become more than usually 

 robust after the discharge ceases. The pus is not usually 

 thin. The Indian physique, though generally more than 

 usually good as regards form, rounded outline, symmetry 

 of proportion, is by no means a robust one. Plandling the 

 muscles of the hmbs conveys to the touch the feeling of 

 flabbiness, as though the bones were cushioned with fat 

 rather than with the sinewy fibre of the red man of our 

 Western fields, or the white man of cooler climes ; and 

 this superiority of form, which in the women of pure blood 

 is superior to any I have ever seen in our own land, is no 

 index whatever of strength or activity, and under the ex- 

 hausting suppuration of these abscesses this physique ac- 

 quires rather an ungainly appearance. 



The usual preparations of iodine do not act as efficient- 

 ly in these tropical districts in resolving the tumors and 

 threatened abscesses, as may be observed in our own colder 

 latitudes. There seems to be a too deep-seated cachexy in 

 the system for the alterative action of such remedies. It 

 seems best to let nature rid herself of this depressed form 

 of irritation, and the discharge does not injure the health 

 materially, as a general rule. Among the Anglo-Saxon 

 foreigners these collections of pus are not nearly so formi- 

 dable, either from chronicity or abundance, as in the na- 

 tive or the Latin resident. 



Trismus Nascentium is to be encountered here with 

 some frequency ; but in most cases the little one has died 

 without the medical attendant having seen it, and one 

 hears a vague account from the parent. These convulsive 

 diseases are frequently to be set down to the extreme im- 

 prudence of the mother in exposing her offspring unneces- 



