and are those of the
throat and lungs. Pneumonia is the most serious and most to be dreaded
of all local diseases. It is really terrifying. Due to the rarity
of the air and relative scarcity of oxygen, pneumonia is usually
fatal at 8000 feet and is uniformly so at 11,000 feet. Patients are
frequently ill only twenty-four hours. Tuberculosis is fairly common,
its prevalence undoubtedly caused by the living conditions practiced
among the highlanders, who are unwilling to sleep in a room which is
not tightly closed and protected against any possible intrusion of
fresh air. In the warmer valleys, where bodily comfort has led the
natives to use huts of thatch and open reeds, instead of the air-tight
hovels of the cold, bleak plateau, tuberculosis is seldom seen. Of
course, there are no "boards of health," nor are the people bothered by
being obliged to conform to any sanitary regulations. Water supplies
are so often contaminated that the people have learned to avoid
drinking it as far as possible. Instead, they eat quantities of soup.

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FIGURE

The Ruins of the Temple of Viracocha at Racche
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In the market-place of Sicuani, the largest town in the valley, and
the border-line between the potato-growing uplands and lowland maize
fields, we attended the famous Sunday market. Many native "druggists"
were present. Their stock usually consisted of "medicines," whose
efficacy was learned by the Incas. There were forty or fifty kinds
of simples and curiosities, cure-alls, and specifics. Fully half
were reported to me as being "useful against fresh air" or the evil
effects of drafts. The "medicines" included such minerals as iron
ore and sulphur; such vegetables as dried seeds, roots, and the
leaves of plants domesticated hundreds of years ago by the Incas or
gathered in the tropical jungles of the lower Urubamba Valley; and
such animals as starfish brought from the Pacific Ocean. Some of them
were really useful herbs, while others have only a psychopathic effect
on the patient. Each medicine was in an attractive little particolored
woolen bag. The bags, differing in design and color, woven on miniature
hand looms, were arranged side by side on the ground, the upper parts
turned over and rolled down so as to disclose the contents.

Not many miles below Sicuani, at a place called Racche, are the
remarkable ruins of the so-called Temple of Viracocha, described by
Squier. At first sight Racche looks as though there