JimenaPulse
About Jimena de la Frontera, the province of Cadiz and Spain as a whole, focused on this small village in the mountainsArchive for health care
HEALTH CARE IN JIMENA (5)
THE DEVELOPMENT OF HEALTH CARE IN JIMENA (1952 – 2007)
by CURRINI
The only chemist’s was that of Don José Sánchez de Medina (I think that was his name). He was a canary fancier and from him I bought everything my parents ordered me to.
Veterinary medicine was covered by Don Domingo Casas in Estación and Don Teodoro in Jimena. Read the rest of this entry »
HEALTH CARE IN JIMENA (4)
THE DEVELOPMENT OF HEALTH CARE IN JIMENA (1952 – 2007)
by CURRINI
People helped each other, too, by passing on things they had learned from their family. Most of this knowledge had no scientific basis: for instance, you might get told to pass a large iron key across your mouth, in the morning for three days, to cure a cold sore. Or to grab a handful of cobwebs and put it in a poultice on a wound. Or to rub your eye with a fly to heal a sty.
There were two doctors in Jimena around 1954: Don José Montero and Don Juan Marina. The former lived and had his surgery across the street from el Pósito (‘depósito‘, i.e. storage rooms, where the Casa de la Cultura at the top of the village is today and that earlier became the village’s first discothèque). He also owned the summer cinema next to his house, where a market was later installed. Don José was asthmatic but he could be seen every day slowly walking up the streets carrying his little black bag, to visit his patients.The other doctor was Don Juan Marina Bocanegra, whose surgery and home was where the new Hotel is now. He was much younger than Don José and further advanced in his medicinal knowledge. He loved shooting and owned the town’s electricity (I remember having electric lights only at nights and never in the daytime). It was Don Juan who started ‘the Insurance’ but the service was so bad that one had in the end to succumb to cash payment. Among other things, the prescriptions never seemed to be covered by it.
There was also the local official partera (midwife), named Rosario, with her green eyes, her hair in a bun and a large black dog that was always looking out of the postigo (shutter or little window in a door). However, most of the women called in the neighbours who had always assisted at births even if they didn’t have a certificate to prove it.
Then there were the practicantes (‘nurses’). Don José Malagón and Don Miguel Cuenca would always be seen with their little shiny boxes that contained the dreaded syringes steeped in alcohol. They went from house to house all too often. The doctors and the practicantes all reeked of medicine and you could smell them coming a mile away.
Follow the story here next Tuesday, November 6th.
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HEALTH CARE IN JIMENA (2)
THE DEVELOPMENT OF HEALTH CARE IN JIMENA
by CURRINI
Our parents had a lot of these remedies, which, if they really did cure you they made you suffer even more. Opening my mouth my mother would say, “Your tongue’s white” and off she’d go to fetch the classical laxative that came in a variety of tastes, including ‘chocolate’, or Agua de Carabaña, which tasted awful, or little papers known as Panacea. If you had a temperature they’d put cold cloths on your forehead or slices of potato; if you trembled with cold from the fever you’d get a hot brick wrapped in a cloth at your feet. For spots and insect bites there was usually a pot with a bálsamo (balsam) plant (I think my Aunt Encarna still has one) and this was rubbed endlessly on the proper place; the spots or bites were probably cured out of boredom.
My Grandmother Isabel used to cure her sore throats and coughs with the slime of large snails, which she put in a glass, adding two spoonfuls of sugar. When our parents thought our thin legs and knobbly knees looked worse than usual, out came the aceite de hígado de bacalao (cod’s liver oil).
I once had a grano de sangre (‘blood boil’) on my behind: I was in bed face down for eight days while my mother put everything on it the neighbours told her to: hot towels, slices of onion, great chunks of bread rubbed with saffron and san pedro (?) leaves. It was interminable but the idea was for the boil to ‘mature’. On the eighth day my Uncle José ‘Hormigo’ came in from the campo and announced that the boil had indeed matured. “Shall I squeeze it?” he asked. The heavens had opened for my mother, who went about preparing cloths and hot water. My uncle began the torture of squeezing out all the evil the wretched thing contained until the blood came out its natural red. A little trapito (rag) was carefully held by some sticky tape and in no time I was outside in the street. My own heaven.◊
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Follow the story here next Tuesday, October 23rd.
HEALTH CARE IN JIMENA (1)
The first in a series of five articles
THE DEVELOPMENT OF HEALTH CARE IN JIMENA (1952 – 2007)
by CURRINI
I had to go to the medical centre in Jimena for the first time the other day. As I sat waiting, looking around at the cleanliness, the size of the place and the number of people being served in this modern facility, I remembered how public health used to be in the village where I was born and raised. My first memory was of the capacity for suffering we were handed down from our parents, not to mention the resignation we showed for those illnesses and accidents that beset us all little by little. Read the rest of this entry »
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