Clergy and lawyers more honoured than physicians or surgeons.—University of St. Mark.—Anatomical amphitheatre.—College of San Fernando.—State of the medical schools and profession on the coast and in the Sierra.—General remarks on Limenian education.
During the continuance of the royal authority in Peru, when military titles were only conferred on men of Spanish blood, the honour of the church and civil courts of judicature was pre-eminently fostered by the government, and the duties of those high vocations devolved on select individuals of white or Spanish race. If there were exceptions to so partial a distribution of favour, these appear to have been made in behalf of a few of the aborigines, or Indian people, whose blood to this day runs in the veins of some of the first families of that country.
The Peruvian clergy have ever been jealous of the dignity of their office, and consulted purity of blood in their august order with the same earnestness that they watched over the orthodoxy of their faith. They appear to have considered all mixture of African blood as a sort of test of spiritual contamination, and never suffered those tarnished with it to approach the altar, except as hearers or penitents,—never as ministers of the sanctuary. We may reasonably suppose that much of this partiality on the one hand, and rigorous exclusion on the other, was originally founded on considerations of political jealousy and distrust; but, be that as it may, the effects of this line of policy are still observable notwithstanding the liberalism that is afloat, for we do not meet with a single curate of negro or zambo progenitors, while in the law the majority of professors are of Spanish origin. The practice of medicine was looked upon as the proper occupation of those who, though possessed of some classical attainments, were deemed unworthy a place in the more distinguished departments of law and theology. But this order of things admitted of a few exceptions; for, as in the dregs of the legal profession there were certain tawny interlopers, so also in the higher walks of the medical department there was a proto-medico, and a few more physicians of European birth or descent. The great body of the profession, however, were raised from among the genuine black, or other more or less crossed Ethiopian castes, to whom, as is affirmed by Ayanque at page 43 of his celebrated satire, titled “Lima por dentro y fuera,” the healing art in all its branches, and especially surgery, was almost entirely intrusted. This arrangement, which involved consequences of vital interest to society, probably arose from inadequate ideas entertained by the Spaniards respecting the medical profession; viewing it less as a noble science than as a superior sort of handicraft. Certainly it did not arise from indifference about their own lives or personal safety; for no men are more careful of themselves when sick, or more ready to call in professional assistance, than the Spaniards of South America. An idea still prevalent is, that individuals selected from “la gente prieta,” or the sable people, are, on account of their more vigorous character and constitution, the best suited for the exercise of a laborious and active profession in the debilitating climate of Lima, where, in former days, young men of European parentage not in some government employment, or members of legal and ecclesiastical establishments, had an insuperable aversion, which they have not yet overcome, to work for their bread.