If the danger to which peaceable travellers are exposed, in Spain, from the knives of robbers, be considerably less than is generally believed, great peril is often incurred at the hands of men who wield cutting weapons professedly for the good of their species. The ignorance and inefficiency of Spanish surgeons and physicians is notorious, and admitted even by their countrymen, who, it has already been shown, are not prone to expose the nakedness of the land. "The base, bloody, and brutal _Sangrados_ of Spain," says Mr. Ford, "have long been the butts of foreign and domestic novelists, who spoke many a true word in their jests." The eagerness with which Spaniards have recourse to French and English medical men whom chance throws in their way, proves how low they estimate the skill and science of their professional countrymen. Many a naval surgeon whose ship has been stationed on the Spanish coast, could tell strange tales of the fatal ignorance he has had opportunity to observe amongst the native faculty. It will be remembered how Zumalacarregui, whose wound would have offered little difficulty to an English village practitioner, was hurried out of the world by the butchering manoeuvres of his conclave of Spanish quacks and _medicos_, terms too often synonymous. And it may be remarked, that in Spain, where there has been so much fighting during the last fifteen years, amputated persons are more rarely met with than in countries that have enjoyed comparative peace during the same period. The natural inference is, that the unlucky soldier whose leg or arm has been shattered by the enemy's fire, usually dies under the hands of unskilful operators. "All Spaniards," Mr. Ford remarks, "are very dangerous with the knife, and more particularly if surgeons. At no period were Spaniards careful even of their own lives, and much less of those of others, being a people of untender bowels." If the Peninsula surgeon is reckless and destructive with his steel, the physician, on the other hand, is usually overcautious with his drugs. Almond-milk and vegetable decoctions, impotent to cure or aggravate disease, are prominent remedies in the Spanish pharmacopoeia; minerals are looked upon with awe, and the timid _tisane_ practice of the French school is exaggerated to absurdity. Upon the principle of keeping edged tools out of the hands of children, it is perhaps just as well that Spanish doctors do not venture to meddle with the strong drugs commonly used in England. Left to nature, with whose operation asses'-milk and herb-broth can in few cases interfere, the invalid has at least a chance of cure.