Owing in a considerable degree to the comparative poverty of the present times, medical juntas are by no means so frequent as they used to be; but yet it is a common saying on serious occasions, where the assistance of more than one medical adviser is thought necessary, that more is seen by four eyes than by two.—“_Mas se ve con cuatro ojos que con dos._” By multiplying skill according to this rule, a score of eyes may be assembled in one junta to search into the patient’s obscure malady, so as to point out the cause and the remedy; or, if there should be no other alternative, let him die according to rule.
Condition of Slave population, and its influence on the family economy and moral sentiments of the European race.
Such is the influence which slave domestics exercise over the feelings and comfort of private families, and, we would even add, over the moral and physical features of the community, that it would be impossible to give a correct picture of the state of society in Lima without first cursorily viewing the condition of the slave population in Peru.
In article 152 of the Political Constitution of the Republic of Peru, it is declared that no one is born a slave in the republic, neither does any one enter from other countries who is not left free when he treads on Peruvian soil. Should any Peruvian be found guilty of importing slaves into the republic for the purposes of traffic, the constitution declares that he shall be deprived of his rights of citizenship. But the internal traffic of slaves still continues, though it is confined to buying and selling such slaves as existed in the country before the war of independence began, or to such of their offspring as were born before the year 1820, when Peru was no longer the acknowledged patrimony of Spaniards. With respect to the mere exterior appearance of negroes born in Peru of African parents, it is observed that they are influenced by the bleaching effects which the climate of the Peruvian coast is known to produce on the ruddy sons of our northern climes who reside for any length of time in Lima. The native negro therefore is lighter in colour, and possessed of finer, more expressive, and much more regular features than the jet-black and lacerated “Bozals” or African-born blacks, on whose countenance and breast are commonly seen deep and hideous scars that bespeak at once their more barbarous origin and their foreign importation.