Drugs, Health, Bodies and Souls in the Tropics ... - Ines G. Županov

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newly arrived patients who waited on the veranda to be examined and confessed, and
so on. The busy rhythm of the Hospital activities was punctured by two meals, lunch
at nine in the morning and dinner at five in the evening, and the cleaning of the
chamber pots at eleven and three in the morning. Three times a week all the beds were
to be thoroughly washed and fragrant substances burnt in all rooms in order to chase
away foul smells.
Besides these instructions concerning the daily schedule, the Jesuits also
provided a calendar of yearly expenses. Depending on the arrival of merchant ships
either from Portugal or from the East and South East Asia, officials were to buy foodstuffs
and medicine to be used later. The reason for the planning of Hospital
provisions in advance was that those things were "better and cheaper" when bought at
the right time. In September and October, Portuguese wine, olives and vinegar were
bought from India-bound ships; in March and April, rice, sugar and wax were bought
from Bengal; in April and May, valuable spices like cinnamon and cloves, and
medicinal substances such as páo da China and benjoim were imported from Melaka
and China, etc. In June and July, the Royal Hospital had to be refurbished and
provisioned with all the necessary equipment (new beds, linen, etc.) in preparation of
the arrival of the ships from Portugal with, as a rule, a huge number of sick soldiers.
And finally, three times a year all the "houses of the Hospital had to be whitewashed"
for the holy festivities of Our Lady in August, for Christmas and for Easter. The
chapel in the Hospital was whitewashed once a year for the feast of the Holy Spirit, its
"patron saint (orago)".
The second chapter of the Regimento gives detailed instructions to individual
officials, arranged in decreasing order of responsibility and authority in the Hospital.
At the head was the Mordomo, who should always be selected from among the
"brothers" of the Misericórdia who were "honorable, noble, rich, prudent, liberal,
compassionate, of good life and reputation", etc. He was, in fact, elected "in place of
the Purveyor (Provedor) of the Santa Misericórdia", the highest office concerned with
public assistance in the Estado da Índia, and was to be obeyed by all others in the
Hospital. The mordomo's job description is scrupulously detailed with an additional
time-schedule and yearly calendar just for his special tasks. The trickling down of
authority and responsibility is one of the major Jesuit preoccupations. Who obeys or
commands whom is prescribed as clearly as possible, thus fostering individual
responsibility. Except for those at the bottom of the list, who consisted of both free
labor and of slaves, and were there only "to be always ready to do what was ordered".
Other than the mordomo and the priest, all other employees received wages,
"calculated" from the highest twenty-five xerafins per month for the physician to two
and half xerafins plus food and half a liter of urraqua, that is, locally produced
alcohol, for menial laborers. Therefore, each person was assigned his place and his
worth on this list, just as on the "list of medication (pauta das mezinhas)" each
medicine had its price.
Both the Regimento and pauta das mezinhas were revised and changed in the
years to come, but the basic structure remained the same. In spite of these pedantic
rules, the administration by the Misericórdia did not seem to work and the Governor,
Matias de Albuquerque (1591-97), ordered the Jesuits to take over the Royal Hospital
again. 153 The problem was obviously larger than the body of rules governing the
behavior of the Hospital officials. Lack of funds and regular financial support, the
deteriorating ecological condition of the town of Goa and the vicissitudes of local
153 APO, Fasc. III, p. 333.
Ines G. Županov, CNRS, Paris