Swallows' Hearts Are Also Used
For Another Purpose; So Is The Blood Of Tortoises - For Strengthening The
Backs Of Children (The Tortoise Being A Hard Animal).
So is that of
snakes, who are held up by head and tail and pricked with needles; the
greater their pain, the more beneficial their blood, which is soaked up
with cotton-wool and applied as a liniment for swollen glands.
In fact,
nearly every animal has been discovered to possess some medicinal property.
But of the charm of such creatures the people know nothing. How
different from the days of old! These legendary and gracious beasts,
that inspired poets and artists and glyptic engravers - these things of
beauty have now descended into the realm of mere usefulness, into the
pharmacopoeia.
The debasement is quite intelligible, when one remembers what
accumulated miseries these provinces have undergone. Memories of
refinement were starved out of the inhabitants by centuries of misrule,
when nothing was of interest or of value save what helped to fill the
belly. The work of bestialization was carried on by the despotism of
Spanish Viceroys and Bourbons. They, the Spaniards, fostered and perhaps
imported the Camorra, that monster of many heads which has established
itself in nearly every town of the south. Of the deterioration in taste
coincident with this period, I lately came across this little bit of
evidence, curious and conclusive: - In 1558 a number of the country-folk
were captured in one of the usual Corsair raids; they were afterwards
ransomed, and among the Christian names of the women I note:
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