In such disorders, the gastric and hepatic functions may be suspected of some irregularity; and, when in any case this is explained to the patient, the disease may be treated as one seated in the organs of digestion, and _frescos_ or cooling acidulated drinks often do wonders. Not only diluted in cold water, but with the addition of ice, the various vegetable acids of the season are given with the best results. They break up the whole chain of morbid symptoms; and the patient, thus encouraged and refreshed, completes convalescence by cold sea-bathing, and a few weeks’ residence at the neat village of Mira-flores, a few miles from the capital. Throughout the entire year, but more particularly during the warmer months, great use, and no small abuse, is made of all sorts of _frescos_, or cooling and acidulated drinks, with or without the addition of ice, and other ingredients of a very opposite nature, as pimento and spices, which latter render the same drink heating to the stomach, that, by ice, is rendered cool on the lip. There are no beverages which the vulgar misapply more than their _frescos_. The most approved of these, as tamarinds and whey, or the juice of the apple and quince, &c. diffused in water and sweetened with sugar, are sometimes so long continued with a view of cooling and purifying the blood, that they finally relax and weaken the stomach; of which there are heard many complaints. Again, iced water, or iced acidulated _frescos_, are frequently misapplied in the common acute diseases of the country when the patients are in a free sweat; for, by suddenly checking a salutary perspiration, very bad consequences may follow: but this, though a well-known fact, is too often overlooked. VIII. _Acido sobre la leche es malo._—It is particularly worthy of notice that, shortly before or after milk happens to be taken pure as a drink, or mixed up in some culinary form as an article of diet, it is believed that no acid can be safely received into the stomach; it being thought necessary that the interval between these incompatible ingredients should be seven hours at least. In illustration of the fact here stated, it may be mentioned that we were once called to see a lady in Lima who had been ailing for about a twelvemonth; and, on inquiring why she had delayed her cure so long, her reply was,— “A year ago, on my arrival from Valparaiso, I called in Dr. ——, a French physician, who ordered me to confine myself to a rice and milk diet alternated with lemonade. I felt so greatly shocked at this gentleman’s extraordinary error in prescribing such treatment, which every one knows to be most hurtful, not only to the infirm, but to the sound and healthy, that I resolved at the time to leave my complaints to nature, rather than expose my life to the greater indiscretion of some other doctor of less fame.”