In the middle of the nineteenth century Odriozola published a collection of verses written by Juan del Valle y Caviedes in the last part of the seventeenth century. The author was born in Lima, and was the son of a rich Spanish merchant. At the age of twenty he went to Spain, where he remained three years, and at the expiration of this period the death of his father obliged him to return to Lima. Finding himself in possession of a considerable fortune, he entered upon a career of vicious and extravagant expenditure, wasting a large part of his inheritance and greatly impairing his health. After a severe illness he determined to reform his mode of life, married, and, in order to preserve the remainder of his property, he opened a shop for the sale of a thousand and one common and cheap articles. The death of his wife made him feel the need of consolation, and he sought it in alcoholic drink, by which he found oblivion of his sorrow in death in 1692, before he had completed his fortieth year. [Sidenote: Valle y Caviedes’ poems] His poems, extensively circulated in manuscript during his life, made him widely known, but in the course of the century and a half following his death he passed very largely out of the public memory. The two collections of these poems published by Odriozola were called _Diente del Parnaso_ and _Poesías serias y jocosas_. In an introduction to these poems as published, Ricardo Palma wrote: “Caviedes was a most unfortunate poet. Many times I have encountered his verses in periodicals of Peru or of foreign countries, either anonymous or signed by some vagabond, but never have I found under them the signature of the true author. In life Caviedes was the victim of quacks; and in death the victim of literary pirates.” [Sidenote: On medical science in Peru] The low state of medical science in Peru in the last half of the seventeenth century called forth from Caviedes numerous critical and satirical references to the ignorance and lamentable practice of Peruvian physicians. Viceroy Liñán y Cisneros (1679-1681), in his account of the state of the viceroyalty, made for his successor, the duke of Palata, refers to the miserable state of medical science and practice in Peru, the lack of revenue and the consequent abandonment of instruction in medicine, and the exposure of the health of the population to the mercy of pretentious ignorance. Gutiérrez wrote of Caviedes that he “had no convictions acquired by study hostile to the uncertainties of the science of medicine. He knew by observation that the disciples of Hippocrates kill when they make mistakes, and the instinct of preservation and love of life put terrible arms into his hands, against those who, in his view, had once brought him to the brink of the grave. His vengeance was cruel. Ill-will served him as a muse, and it cannot be denied that in many of his compositions there was manifest true inspiration.”[138] II [Sidenote: Sons of nobles sent to Peru]