It must be said, in justice to these able practitioners, that as a body they are careful in their dress: external appearance, not to say finery in apparel, raises in the eyes of the many, a profession which here is of uncertain social standing. On the same principle how careful is the costume, how brilliant are the shirt-studs of foreign fiddlers when in England! The worthy Andalucian doctor of our Spanish family, and an efficient one, as two of his patients now at rest could testify, never paid a visit except when gaily attired. So the _Matador_, when he enters the arena to kill the bull, is clad as a first-rate dandy _majo_. This attention to person arises partly from the Moro-Ibero love of ostentation, and partly from sound Galenic principles and a high sense of professional duty. The ancient authorities enforced on the practitioner an attention to everything which created cheerful impressions, in order that he might arrive at the patient’s pillow like a messenger of good tidings, and as a minister of health, not of death. They held that a grave costume might suggest unpleasant associations to the sick man. Raven-coloured undertaker tights, and a funereal, cadaverous look to match, are harbingers of blue devils and black crape, which no man, even when in blessed health, contemplates with comfort; while the effect of such a _facies hippocratica_ staring in the face of a poor devil whose life is despaired of, must be fatal. [Sidenote: DRUGGISTS.] The prescriptions of these well-dressed gentlemen are somewhat more old-fashioned than their coats. Their grand recipe in the first instance is to do nothing beyond taking the fee and leaving nature alone, or, as the set phrase has it, _dejar á la naturaleza_. The young and those whose constitutions are strong and whose complaints are weak, do well under the healing influence of their kind nurse Nature, and recover through her vis medicatrix, which, if not obstructed by art, everywhere works wonderful cures. The _Sangrado_ will say that a Spanish man or woman is more marvellously made than a clock, inasmuch as his or her machinery has a power in itself to regulate its own motions, and to repair accidents; and therefore the watchmaker who is called in, need not be in a hurry to take it to pieces when a little oiling and cleaning may set all to rights. The remedies, when the proper time for their application arrives, are simple, and are sought for rather among the vegetables of the earth’s surface than from the minerals in its bowels. The external recipes consist chiefly of papers smeared with lard, applied to the abdomen, sinapisms and mustard poultices to the feet, fomentations of marsh-mallows or camomile flowers, and the aid of the curate. The internal remedies, the tisanes, the _Leches de Almendras_, _de Burras_, decoctions of rice, and so forth, succeed each other in such regular order, that the patient scholar has nothing to do but