HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



251 



The phyficians were in general the perfons who pre- 

 pared and applied medicines ; but they accompanied 

 their cures with feveral fuperftitious ceremonies, with 

 invocations to their gods, and imprecations againfl dis- 

 tempers, in order to render their art more myfterious 

 and eftimable. The phyficians held the goddefs Tzapo- 

 potlatenan in veneration, as the proteclrefs of their art, 

 and believed her to have been the difcoverer of many 

 medicinal fecrets, and amongfl: others of the oil which 

 they extracted by diftillation from the OcotL 



It is wonderful that the Mexicans, and efpecially the 

 poor among them, were not fubjeel: to numberlefs dif- 

 eafes, confidering the quality of their food. This is an 

 article in which fingular circumftances attended them ; 

 for having been, for many years after the foundation of 

 Mexico, fubjected to the moft miferable kind of life up- 

 on the little iliands of the lake, they were conftrained 

 by neceffity to feed upon whatever they could find in 

 the waters. During that difaftrous time, they learned 

 to eat, not only the roots of the marfh plants, water 

 ferpents, which abounded there, the Axoktl, Atetepiz, 

 Atopinan, and other fuch little animals, inhabitants of 

 the water; but even ants, marfh flies, and the very eggs 

 of the fame flies. They fiflied fuch quantities of thofe flies, 

 called by them Axajatl, that they eat them, fed feveral 

 kinds of birds with them, and carried them to market. 

 They pounded them together, and made little balls of 

 them, which they rolled up in leaves of maize, and 

 boiled in water with nitre. Some hiftorians who have 

 tafted this food, pronounce it not difagreeable. From 

 the eggs, which thofe flies depofit in great abundance 

 on the rufhes in the lake, they extracted that fingular 

 fpecies of caviare which they called Ahuauhtlu 



Not 



