sign to show that my new mission was to strenuously break the rocks of ignorance that had confounded Arequipa for too long. I, frail creature that I was, would be the Minister of His wrath. From my virgin breasts would flow the milk of His righteousness.
For the purest and simplest creatures are ever made the instruments of His will. Even flies and lice have been harnessed as messengers of Divine Justice, and have taught wicked people many a stern lesson.
Doctor Santo Aldobrandini
As the self-appointed scribe of that great storyteller, skin, I work nightly on my manuscript. There is a certain joyful urgency for its delivery.
I naturally begin the tale with the earliest afflictions. The physician can identify neglected babies by their rashes. Folds of their own skin rub together; the friction chafes. Sometimes a fluid is exuded, acrid enough to inflame the local mischief. Presently a raw, hurting surface is produced.
Babies afflicted in this way are prone to fits of angry crying, which can make them unpopular, and leads to further neglect, and worse rashes. A little washing in tepid water, and the application of a calendula lotion will soothe. Yet more than anything it is the loving touch of a feminine hand that cures Intertrigo. In some cultures the mother’s adoring gaze is believed to physic and fatten a baby more than her milk. Not having known such a thing myself, and being persistently lean, I’ve always suspected some truth in this folk-wisdom. And I have sworn that the first baby of mine shall be gazed and smiled at until his whole skin lights up like a candle; or hers. No child shall ever be fed such ocular love!
But, to return to purely medical matters: infants must be allowed a regular access of fresh air to the integument. Confined babies are alsoprone to Red-gum, or Tooth-rash, pearly white pimples that appear over the face, neck and arms.
Uncared-for babies suffer more often than loved ones from Branny Tetter, in which the skin falls off in pale cereal-like scales. Neglected, the condition advances to small nutty lumps and weeping fissures under the hair. It’s simply cured by a little glycerine-of-borax.
Yet someone must notice it and care about the shedding skin enough to apply the medicine, and to cradle the child in their arms while it cries as the cold salve is smeared on the little hurting head.
Minguillo Fasan
My commiserations to the Erudite Reader: this part of the story’s prattled out by a little baby in a crib, so what can He expect by way of pleasantly sophisticated atrocity? Feeble infant concerns shall be the Reader’s concerns for a little while yet.
Milk, for example, features much at this point.
No wet-nurse would take me, so I clamped my jaws on the maternal breast and sucked.
The first of my mother’s crimes, for which she would in time be punished, was this: she tried not to look at me, even when I bit. As for the milk, I swear it tasted unwilling . She let her eyes rest lovingly upon my sister Riva, dancing her dolly in a corner of the room. I had to feed on second-hand sweetness, intercepting my mean portion of mother-love by stealth.
The Compassionate Reader cries out in pity for the poor Venetian bambino , whose mamma begrudged him even the tender liquid of life. Whose mamma never once dropped a kiss on his face, never diddled a little finger of his between her own.
‘How did that feel?’ the Reader asks tenderly.
It felt stinking.
It felt shameful, and it tasted of iron, for my toothless gums champed so hard on my mother’s flinching teats that I drew blood.
And still she looked away, handing me to a nursemaid with a bottle and never once asking for me back. My father, call him forty years old then, did not ask it of her. How could he? – he did not come into the nursery, even.
Look at my parents, turning their backs on me. It was not good, and soon it would not be safe.The Old-fashioned Reader will smell the milk curdling; see a new slant to the story
For the purest and simplest creatures are ever made the instruments of His will. Even flies and lice have been harnessed as messengers of Divine Justice, and have taught wicked people many a stern lesson.
Doctor Santo Aldobrandini
As the self-appointed scribe of that great storyteller, skin, I work nightly on my manuscript. There is a certain joyful urgency for its delivery.
I naturally begin the tale with the earliest afflictions. The physician can identify neglected babies by their rashes. Folds of their own skin rub together; the friction chafes. Sometimes a fluid is exuded, acrid enough to inflame the local mischief. Presently a raw, hurting surface is produced.
Babies afflicted in this way are prone to fits of angry crying, which can make them unpopular, and leads to further neglect, and worse rashes. A little washing in tepid water, and the application of a calendula lotion will soothe. Yet more than anything it is the loving touch of a feminine hand that cures Intertrigo. In some cultures the mother’s adoring gaze is believed to physic and fatten a baby more than her milk. Not having known such a thing myself, and being persistently lean, I’ve always suspected some truth in this folk-wisdom. And I have sworn that the first baby of mine shall be gazed and smiled at until his whole skin lights up like a candle; or hers. No child shall ever be fed such ocular love!
But, to return to purely medical matters: infants must be allowed a regular access of fresh air to the integument. Confined babies are alsoprone to Red-gum, or Tooth-rash, pearly white pimples that appear over the face, neck and arms.
Uncared-for babies suffer more often than loved ones from Branny Tetter, in which the skin falls off in pale cereal-like scales. Neglected, the condition advances to small nutty lumps and weeping fissures under the hair. It’s simply cured by a little glycerine-of-borax.
Yet someone must notice it and care about the shedding skin enough to apply the medicine, and to cradle the child in their arms while it cries as the cold salve is smeared on the little hurting head.
Minguillo Fasan
My commiserations to the Erudite Reader: this part of the story’s prattled out by a little baby in a crib, so what can He expect by way of pleasantly sophisticated atrocity? Feeble infant concerns shall be the Reader’s concerns for a little while yet.
Milk, for example, features much at this point.
No wet-nurse would take me, so I clamped my jaws on the maternal breast and sucked.
The first of my mother’s crimes, for which she would in time be punished, was this: she tried not to look at me, even when I bit. As for the milk, I swear it tasted unwilling . She let her eyes rest lovingly upon my sister Riva, dancing her dolly in a corner of the room. I had to feed on second-hand sweetness, intercepting my mean portion of mother-love by stealth.
The Compassionate Reader cries out in pity for the poor Venetian bambino , whose mamma begrudged him even the tender liquid of life. Whose mamma never once dropped a kiss on his face, never diddled a little finger of his between her own.
‘How did that feel?’ the Reader asks tenderly.
It felt stinking.
It felt shameful, and it tasted of iron, for my toothless gums champed so hard on my mother’s flinching teats that I drew blood.
And still she looked away, handing me to a nursemaid with a bottle and never once asking for me back. My father, call him forty years old then, did not ask it of her. How could he? – he did not come into the nursery, even.
Look at my parents, turning their backs on me. It was not good, and soon it would not be safe.The Old-fashioned Reader will smell the milk curdling; see a new slant to the story
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