Medical Notes. 609 



sarily — ophthalmia also resulting from this imprudence, 

 though it is astonisliiug what a profuse suppuration they 

 will bear without having the eye or the sight affected, it 

 being rai-e to find the cornea or the humors of the eye im- 

 plicated in these affections. The infant is bathed directly 

 after birth in cold water, and this cold application is kept 

 up as part of the daily regimen. Few or no precautions 

 are. taken to keep it off the damp ground, day or night, 

 and the little scamp kicks and rolls about for hours on his 

 damp mother-earth; or, slung behind their mothers' backs 

 in a shawl, tliey are carried about with them in their visit- 

 ings at all times of day or night. It is rare for them to 

 " take cold," apparently, and they often thrive, in spite of 

 book -wisdom, until the age wlien dirt -eating begins, or 

 longer, if they shoiud not acquire that vice.* 



From repeated abortions, accidental, or possibly more 

 frequently induced artificially, it is rare to see more than 

 two children brought up by Indian or mestizo parents, or 

 in the households of the whites who live unmarried with 

 the women. These abortions result from want of affec- 

 tion — too little and too great luxury and enlightenment 

 seeming to be equally unfavorable to the development of 

 maternal love — and from the system of concubinage which 

 prevails so extensively on the Maranon among the whites, 

 Indians, and mestizos, where the uncertainty of possession 

 of partners makes the female dread the probability of her 

 keeper leaving her with a large family on her hands which 

 she does not care to look out for. The frequency of uter- 

 ine complaints, as a consequence of these unnatural at- 

 tempts, produces sterility, or continuous bad health among 



* I have often been surprised at the habit of many of the parents of allow- 

 ing their little childien to drink the rum of the country, and smoke the to- 

 bacco ; and still more, that these habits are so often indulged in without kill- 

 ing them. Ignorance and vice are so near akin that one can hardly tell 

 which to charge the parent with. 



2Q 



