180 



NOtES ON BRAZIL. 



undisputed range of thirty miles round. I have seen patients at his 

 house from that distance, who had the reputation of being rich, and 

 appeared to be respectable. This renowned Doctor practised surgery as 

 well as medicine, and his instruments once fell under my observation. 

 They were in the worst possible order, and utterly unfit for the most 

 common operation. Taking up a rusty saw, I inquired whether he 

 would venture to amputate a limb with that instrument? " Why 

 not ?" he replied ; " it is the best I have, and no other person here can 

 perform such an operation." 



Great must be the sufferings of the diseased in this country, as they 

 iseldom think of obtaining medical advice until nature is almost exhausted ; 

 then they are, many of them, trailed in a clumsy Carro, over a pathless 

 wild, for many a wearisome league, exposed to rain, wind, or sun, 

 perhaps, to each of them alternately. Strange would it be, if death 

 were not often to cut short the journey, or quickly to render it unavailing. 

 Yet the hardships of approach to the Doctor, and his want of skiU, are 

 not all, which the patient has to struggle with. By the colonial laws of 

 Portugal, at that time in full agency, the Apothecary was obliged to 

 have upon his counter, two old books of recipes, and to follow them 

 without wavering. His duty was to ascertain the disease; the learned 

 men of Lisbon had, two centuries before, invariably settled the mode of 

 cure. Nor is this barbarous practice, connected with a dignified stupidity, 

 and a senseless jargon, entirely laid aside in every part of Brazil to this 

 day. Not medical science alone, but science in general, is there a 

 foreign plant. 



That the people discern the preposterous nature of such regulations, 

 is evident from the eagerness with which they seek for a restoration of 

 health at the hands of every Briton. My landlord, who was asthmatic, 

 supposing that I shared in the common skill of my countrymen, applied 

 to me to cure him. I know nothing of physic, but ventured to give him 

 some trifling preparation, which, I hoped, might sooth his niind as weU 

 as his cough. He thought himself better, and spread abroad my fame, 

 so that I was pestered with patients labouring under all kinds of diseases, 



