ABSTRACT
The best way to begin this chapter is to introduce a food taboo: during her menstrual periods, a woman has to avoid eating guinea-pig meat since it can produce irritation and a greater loss of blood. The people have already seen several times that guinea-pig meat is considered to be hot, and consequently to have the property of transmitting heat to the person who consumes it. The author shall now develop further analysis of the broth or locro of the guinea-pig as 'ideally' curative. Hot foods, among them guinea-pig meat, are considered to be particularly irritating and therefore highly counter-productive in treating wounds. The people have also observed a variant of this broth where the final result, after a good deal of cooking, is not a soup but a sort of jelly of guinea-pig meat mixed with potatoes, which is given to a child affected by diarrhoea.
