CHAPTER XX.
Polynesian Surgeons—Figian treatment—A shipwrecked Figian—Samoan Priests and Doctors—Samoan physics—Polynesian Disease-makers—Namaquan cruelty—Left to die—Savage arithmetic—Bartering for Sheep—The Abiadiongs—A Pawnee M.D.—An Indian Sawbones—A medicine dance—An Indian vapour bath—Cupping three Queens—What is expected of a Physician—Hints to Travellers in the East—Stimulants to be avoided in the East—Cold water bathing in Nubia.
The science of surgery and medicine, as practised among savages, forms not the least curious and interesting feature in the story of their lives. Since they have as a rule no belief in natural or unavoidable death, it follows that natural or unavoidable sickness, as being the agents of death, are no more faithfully entertained. Unlike us, who have a name for the thousand ills that afflict us—from tooth-rash to elephantiasis—the savage has but one name for all the diseases he is acquainted with, and that one name is—the devil. Ague—and it is the devil within the man shaking his limbs; rheumatism, myriads of tiny imps are under the skin nibbling the wretched sufferer’s bones; stomach-ache, tooth-ache, head-ache—it is the devil, and nobody and nothing else.
The business of the witch-doctor, or the greegree man, is to eject the devil from his patient—by fair means or foul as soon as possible. Dispersed through various preceding chapters instances of the way in which the ejection is attempted have already been given; we have witnessed how the Indian medicine-man operated on the sick baby, and on the unlucky little girl who had a stitch in her side; how the Dayak doctor cheated the devil and laid a trap for, caught, and replaced his patient’s departing spirit of life; how the Patagonian quack attempted the cure of the Patagonian infant. The medical and surgical customs of many savage nations, however, remain yet to be noticed. Let us see how they till lately managed such things in Polynesia.
A fractured limb they set without much trouble: applying splinters of bamboo cane to the sides, and binding it up till it was healed. A dislocation they usually succeeded in reducing, but the other parts of their surgical practice were marked by a rude promptness, temerity, and barbarism almost incredible. A man one day fell from a tree and dislocated some part of his neck. His companions, on perceiving it, instantly took him up; one of them placed his head between his own knees, and held it firmly, while the others, taking hold of his body, twisted the joint into its proper place.
On another occasion, a number of young men in the district of Faro, were carrying large stones suspended from each end of a pole across their shoulders (their usual mode of carrying a burden); one of them so injured the vertebræ as to be almost unable to move; he had, as they expressed it, fate te tua, broken the back. His fellow-workmen laid him flat on his face on the grass, one grasped and pulled his shoulders, and the other his legs, while a third actually pressed with both knees his whole weight upon the back where the bones appeared displaced. On being asked what they were doing, they coolly replied that they were only straightening the man’s back, which had been broken in with carrying stones. The vertebræ appeared to be replaced, they bound a long girdle repeatedly round his body, led him home, and without any other treatment he was in a short time able to resume his employment.
The operation of trepanning they sometimes attempted, and say they have practised with success. It is reported that there are persons living in the Island of Borabora, on whom it has been performed, or at least an operation very much resembling it: the bones of the skull having been fractured in battle, they have cleared away the skin and coverings, and, having removed the fractured piece of bone, have carefully fitted in a piece of cocoa-nut shell and replaced the covering and skin, on the healing of which the man has recovered. I never saw any individual who had undergone this operation, but from the concurrent testimony of the people I have no doubt they have performed it.
It is also related by Stedman, that on some occasions when the brain has been injured as well as the bone, they have opened the skull, taken out the injured portion of the brain, and, having a pig ready, have killed it, taken out the pig’s brains, put them in the man’s head, and covered them up. They persist in stating that this has been done, but add that the persons always became furious with madness and died.
The sick man finds small compassion in Figi. If he is not very sick he is left to recover as he may, but the patience of his relations is soon exhausted. This does not seem to arise so much from inhumanity of disposition as from the miserable belief that some evil spirit has a hand in the business, and that as long as life remains in the ill conditioned body, the demon will be lurking about, and may presently attack another victim. They are a wonderfully matter-of-fact people, and do not scruple to make urgent representations to the invalid of the peril he is threatening his relations with by this vacillating temper—neither getting well nor dying: “You don’t seem to mend in the least, in fact you are looking disgustingly ill this morning, where’s the use of holding out? If you are to die, why not do it at once? Be reasonable and let some one help you out of your misery.”
Gentle and simple experience the same treatment. Mr. Williams relates the case of a Princess of Nakembo, who fell sick. The aid of the best native doctors was secured, large offerings made to the gods, and a temple begun, to secure their favour, but all was in vain. Rich puddings from sixteen to twenty-one feet in circumference were made, and through the priests sacrificed to the gods, but, despite all, the princess grew worse, and it was formally resolved to do her the charitable office of strangulation, when the missionaries interfered, took charge of and cured her. The same authority also quotes the case of a woman of Somosomo, who was in a very abject state through the protracted absence of her husband. For five weeks, though two women lived in the same house, she lay uncared for, becoming reduced to a mere skeleton. After this she had food and medicine from the missionaries and improved. One morning, however, as a servant was carrying her her breakfast he met a funeral party who told him to take the breakfast back. The man could then remember that on the previous day he had found an old woman at the house of the invalid who made no secret of her errand but openly declared, “I came to see my friend and enquire if she was ready to be strangled, but as she is strong we will not strangle her yet.” As the sequel proved, the old murderess soon altered her mind.
Another instance given of the extraordinary treatment the sick and afflicted of Figi receive at the hands of their fellows concerns a native sailor. There was a violent storm, and the unfortunate in question with several others were spilt into the sea, and, as was thought, perished every one. This one man, however, managed to support himself by swimming till, utterly exhausted, he reached one of a fleet of canoes, and managed to pull himself aboard unperceived. One would have thought that his first act would have been to make himself known to his brother mariners, but he was a Figian among Figians and knew the probable fate that awaited him. As day broke the man was discovered; a short council was held, and it being universally agreed that there was something highly mysterious that this one should be saved while the rest, including the owner of the ship, who was a prince, should be lost, and that since he himself could give no better account of his escape than that “he swam,” the best course would be to knock him on the head and throw him overboard. One of the crew, however, presently recognized the wrecked man as a very skilful sailor, and the craft being short handed, it was finally resolved to let him live, provided he at once took the great steer oar and steered the vessel. To handle the steer oar of a Figian canoe is work for a very strong man. Nevertheless the poor man, weak and trembling from his long immersion, obeyed and steered the vessel through a long and tedious voyage, when, more dead than alive, he was carried ashore and housed in a shed. Here he remained till he was nearly well, when, unluckily, on the very eve of the ship putting to sea again he showed symptoms of a relapse. “No one could be spared to look after the invalid, and to take him on the canoe might give him pain and inconvenience his friends; they therefore concluded that it would be the best plan to strangle him, which purpose they, with his own consent, carried out. They kissed and wept over him! strangled, buried and mourned for him; and the next day set out on their voyage.”
There is, however, a dreadful charge laid at the door of the Figian sick—a charge which Europeans who have lived amongst them declare to be not without foundation. Actuated by inexplicable motives they will, by lying on the mats of their friends, and by handling their clothing and cooking utensils, endeavour to communicate the disease with which they are afflicted. If this be true the anxiety of the Figian to see a sick relative comfortably entombed is in a great measure accounted for.
Turner, the Polynesian missionary, relates that when a Samoan falls sick his friends take a present to the priest: he says he will pray to the god for recovery; and then he goes to the sick person, and anoints with oil the part affected. He uses no particular oil. When he sits down he calls some one of the family to hand him some oil, and dipping his hand into the cup, passes it gently over the part two or three times. No medicines are used for the sick: if the body is hot, they go and lie down in cold water; if cold, they kindle a fire and warm themselves. After death the friends of the deceased are anxious to know the cause of death: they go with a present to the priest, and beg him to get the dead man to speak, and confess the sins which caused his death. The priest may be distant from the dead body, but he pretends to summon the spirit, and to have it within him. He speaks in his usual tone, and tells him to say before them all what he did to cause his death. Then he (the priest) whines out in a weak faltering voice a reply, as if from the spirit of the departed, confessing that he stole cocoa nuts from such a place, or that he fished at some particular spot forbidden by the king, or that he ate the fish which was the incarnation of his family god. As the priest whines out something of this sort, he manages to squeeze out some tears, and sob and cry over it. The friends of the departed feel relieved to know the cause, get up and go home. At death, one will say to his friend, “I’m going to the moon—think of me as being there.” Another will say, “I’m going to be a star;” and mentions the particular part of the heavens where they are to look for him. Another will say, “I shan’t go away—I shall remain in the grave, and be here with you.” Thus they seem to think they have only to choose where their disembodied spirits are to go after death. They tell of a Tokelau man who went up to the moon, and have their tale also of “the man in the moon.” They say, too, that the moon is the special residence of the kings and priests of Tokelau. The stars they believe to be the spirits of the departed. When the full moon begins to wane they suppose that it is being eaten by the inhabitants of the region. From the new moon until the full they consider that the food is growing again. An eclipse of the moon is thought to be some sudden calamity destroying the food of the departed kings, and occasions special concern; and prayers and a meat offering of grated cocoa nut are immediately presented to their great god Tui Tokelau to avert the evil. As the eclipse passes off, they think it is all owing to their prayers.
The Samoans never had recourse to any internal remedy, except an emetic, which they sometimes tried after having eaten a poisonous fish. Sometimes, juices from the bush were tried; at other times, the patient drank water until it was rejected; and on some occasions, mud, and even the most unmentionable filth was mixed up, and taken as an emetic draught. Latterly, as their intercourse with Tongans, Figians, Tahitians, and Sandwich Islanders increased, they made additions to their pharmacopœia of juices from the bush. As in Egypt, each disease had its particular physician. Shampooing and anointing the affected part of the body with scented oil by the native doctors was common; and to this charms were frequently added, consisting of some flowers from the bush done up in a piece of native cloth, and put in a conspicuous place in the thatch, over the patient. Now, however, European medicines are eagerly sought after; so much so, that every missionary is obliged to have a dispensary, and to set apart a certain hour every day to give advice and medicine to the sick. As the Samoans supposed disease to be occasioned by the wrath of some particular deity, their principal desire, in any difficult case, was not for medicine, but to ascertain the cause of the calamity. The friends of the sick went to the high-priest of the village. He was sure to assign some cause; and, whatever that was, they were all anxiety to have it removed as the means of restoration. If he said they were to give up a canoe to the god, it was given up. If a piece of land was asked, it was passed over at once. Or if he did not wish anything from the party, he would probably tell them to assemble the family, “confess, and throw out.” In this ceremony each member of the family confessed his crimes, and any judgments which, in anger, he had invoked on the family, or upon the particular member of it then ill; and as a proof that he revoked all such imprecations, he took a little water in his mouth and spurted it out towards the person who was sick. The custom is still kept up by many; and the sick bed of a dear friend often forms a confessional, before which long-concealed and most revolting crimes are disclosed.
In surgery they lanced ulcers with a shell or a shark’s tooth, and, in a similar way, bled from the arm. For inflammatory swellings, they sometimes tried local bleeding, but shampooing and rubbing with oil were and are still the more common remedies in such cases. Cuts they washed in the sea and bound up with a leaf. Into wounds in the scalp they blew the smoke of burnt chestnut wood. To take a barbed spear from the arm or leg, they cut into the limb from the opposite side, and pushed it right through. Amputation they never attempted. The treatment of the sick was, as it is now, invariably humane, and all that could be expected. They wanted for no kind of food, which they might desire by night or day, if it was at all in the power of their friends to procure it. In the event of the disease assuming a dangerous form, messengers were dispatched to friends at a distance that they might have an opportunity of being in time to see and say farewell to a departing relative. This is still the custom. The greater the rank, the greater the stir and muster about the sick of friends from the neighbourhood and from a distance. Everyone who goes to visit a sick friend supposed to be near death takes with him a present of a fine mat or some other kind of valuable property as a farewell expression of regard. Among the worldly minded, whose interests centre in this life, this heaping together of property by the bedside of a dying relative is still in high repute.
Of all classes of savage “Mystery-men,” rain-makers, thunder-makers, fly-makers, etc., the most singular of all, perhaps, are those denominated disease-makers. Amongst the Tannese, of Polynesia, these men are feared and worshipped as gods. They are supposed to be able to create disease and death by nohak burning. Nohak is literally rubbish, or refuse of food, which these disease-makers are continually searching after. The people therefore take every precaution, by burning or throwing into the sea all the rubbish they find lying about, to prevent those men from getting it. Should a disease-maker find the skin of a lanana, he rolls it up in a leaf, and wears it all day hanging round his neck, so that the people may see it; who say to each other, “He has got something; he will do for somebody at night.” After wearing it all day long, he takes it home in the evening, and scrapes some bark off a tree; he mixes this up with the lanana skin, and rolls it up tightly in a leaf, and then puts one end of it close enough to the fire to cause it to singe and smoulder, and burn away very gradually. How, when a Tannese falls ill, he is fully persuaded some disease-maker is burning his nohak, so that he provides himself with a rude kind of horn, made out of some perforated shell. This shell he gets some one present to blow for him, and this is fully understood by the disease-maker to mean that the sick man wishes him to discontinue the burning, and also, that a present shall be sent to him the next morning; so that when the disease-maker hears the shell blown, he says to his friends, “That is the man whose rubbish I am burning, he is ill; let us stop burning, and see what present he will bring in the morning.” The sick man faithfully keeps his promise, and, in the morning, some present is made—pigs, mats, and such like. Whereupon the disease-maker promises he will do all he can to prevent the rubbish being again burned. Should a person die, his friends suppose that the disease-makers were not pleased with the presents made, and burned his rubbish to the end. When it is all burned they believe the person will die. Nor do the disease-makers seem to be the impostors, for should one of the craft fall ill, he fully believes some one is burning his nohak, and he blows the shell, and makes the presents as readily as the rest.
Cruel and abominable as are many of the Polynesian methods of disposing of their sick and aged, that there is “in lowest depths a deeper still,” many African tribes furnish an illustration. In an early part of this volume mention has been made of the poor old Bakalai, whom Du Chaillu met, and who was “turned out to die.” Such cases are not without parallel. Burchell quotes such a case, as does Moffat, as occurring among the Namaquas. This latter gentleman was informed that in a certain part of the forest there was an old woman squatting all alone and seemingly dying.
“On reaching the spot we beheld an object of heartrending distress. It was a venerable looking old woman, a living skeleton, sitting with her head leaning on her knees. She appeared terrified at our presence, and especially at me. She tried to rise, but, trembling with weakness, sunk again to the earth. I addressed her by the name which sounds sweet in every clime, and charms even the savage ear, ‘My mother, fear not, we are friends and will do you no harm.’ I put several questions to her, but she appeared either speechless or afraid to open her lips. I again repeated ‘Pray mother who are you and how do you come to be in this situation?’ to which she replied ‘I am a woman, I have been here four days, my children have left me here to die.’ ‘Your children?’ I interrupted. ‘Yes,’ raising her hand to her shrivelled bosom, ‘my own children, three sons and two daughters. They are gone,’ pointing with her finger, ‘to yonder blue mountain, and have left me to die.’ ‘And pray why did they leave you?’ I enquired. Spreading out her hands she replied, ‘I am old, you see, and I am no longer able to serve them; when they kill game I am too feeble to help them carry home the flesh. I am not able to gather wood to make fire, and I cannot carry their children on my back as I used to do.’ This last sentence was more than I could bear, and though my tongue was cleaving to the roof of my mouth for want of water, this reply opened a fountain of tears. I remarked that I was surprised that she had escaped the lions which seemed to abound and to have approached very near the spot where she was. She took hold of the skin of her left arm with her fingers and raising it up as one would do a loose linen, she added, ‘I hear the lions, but there is nothing on me that they would eat; I have no flesh on me for them to scent.’ At this moment the waggon drew near which greatly alarmed her, for she supposed that it was an animal. Assuring her that it would do her no harm, I said that as I could not stay I would put her into the waggon and take her with me. At this remark she became convulsed with terror. Others addressed her, but all to no effect. She replied that if we took her and left her at another village they would do the same thing again. ‘It is our custom, I am nearly dead, I do not want to die again.’ The sun was now piercingly hot; the oxen were raging in the yoke and we ourselves nearly delirious. Finding it impossible to influence the woman to move without running the risk of her dying convulsed in our hands, we collected a quantity of fuel, gave her a good supply of dry meat, some tobacco, and a knife, with some other articles, telling her we should return in two days and stop the night, when she would be able to go with us; only she must keep up a good fire at night as the lions would smell the dried flesh if they did not scent her.”
Here is another case; the victim this time is a child, and her persecutors the Makalolo, likewise a South African tribe.
“The rich show kindness to the poor in expectation of services, and a poor person who has no relatives will seldom be supplied even with water in illness, and when dead will be dragged out to be devoured by the hyænas instead of being buried. Relatives alone will condescend to touch a dead body. It would be easy to enumerate instances of inhumanity which I have witnessed. An interesting looking girl came to my waggon one day in a state of nudity, and almost a skeleton. She was a captive from another tribe and had been neglected by the man who claimed her. Having supplied her wants I made enquiry for him, and found that he had been unsuccessful in raising a crop of corn and had no food to give her. I volunteered to take her, but he said he would allow me to feed her and make her fat, and then he would take her away. I protested against this heartlessness, and as he said he would not part with his child I was precluded from attending to her wants. In a day or two she was lost sight of; she had gone out a little way from the town and being too weak to return had been cruelly left to perish. Another day I saw a poor boy going to the water to drink, apparently in a starving condition. This case I brought before the chief in council and found that his emaciation was ascribed to disease and want combined. He was not one of the Makalolo, but a member of a subdued tribe. I showed them that any one professing to claim a child and refusing proper nutriment would be guilty of his death. Sekeletu decided that the owner of this boy should give up his alleged right rather than destroy the child. When I took him he was so far gone as to be in the cold stage of starvation, but was soon brought round by a little milk given three or four times a day. On leaving Linyanti I handed him over to the charge of Sekeletu, who feeds his servants very well.”
One’s only source of consolation is that among this and neighbouring tribes intellect is at so low a par that it is more than probable that they are mainly influenced by a horror of the sight of death, and not by motives of selfishness or wanton inhumanity. Moreover, if it were attempted to impart a knowledge of medicine to them, it is doubtful if in their profound obtuseness they would not inflict much more injury than work good on a patient that might come under their hands. One thing is certain, if the following instance furnished by the traveller Galton may be relied on, their arithmetical capabilities would have to be greatly cultivated and improved before they could be entrusted with the admeasurement of drugs; a drop more or less of which kills or cures.
“They have no way of distinguishing days, but reckon by the rainy season, the dry season, or the pignut season. When inquiries are made about how many days’ journey off a place may be, their ignorance of all numerical ideas is very annoying. In practice, whatever they may possess in their language, they certainly use no numeral greater than three. When they wish to express four, they take to their fingers which are to them as formidable instruments of calculation as a sliding rule is to an English schoolboy. They puzzle very much after five, because no spare hand remains to grasp and secure the fingers that are required for units. Yet they seldom lose oxen; the way in which they discover the loss of one is not by the number of the herd being diminished, but by the absence of a face they know. When bartering is going on each sheep must be paid for separately. Thus, suppose two sticks of tobacco to be the rate of exchange for one sheep, it would sorely puzzle a Damara to take two sheep and give him four sticks. I have done so and seen a man first put two of the sticks apart and take a sight over them at one of the sheep he was about to sell. Having satisfied himself that that one was honestly paid for, and finding to his surprise that exactly two sticks remained in hand to settle the account for the other sheep, he would be afflicted with doubts; the transaction seemed to come out too pat to be correct, and he would refer back to the first couple of sticks and then his mind got hazy and confused, and wandered from one sheep to the other, and he broke off the transaction until two sticks were put into his hand and one sheep driven away, and then the other two sticks given him and the second sheep driven away. When a Damara’s mind is bent upon number it is too much occupied to dwell upon quantity; thus, a heifer is brought from a man for ten sticks of tobacco; his large hands being both spread out upon the ground and a stick placed upon each finger, he gathers up the tobacco; the size of the mass pleases him and the bargain is struck. You then want to buy a second heifer: the same process is gone through, but half sticks instead of whole ones are put upon his fingers; the man is equally satisfied at the time, but occasionally finds it out and complains the next day. Once while I watched a Damara floundering hopelessly in a calculation on one side of me, I observed Dinah my spaniel equally embarrased on the other. She was overlooking half a dozen of her new born puppies which had been removed two or three times from her, and her anxiety was excessive as she tried to find out if they were all present or if any were still missing. She kept puzzling and running her eyes over them backwards and forwards but could not satisfy herself. She evidently had a vague notion of counting, but the figure was too large for her brain. Taking the two as they stood, dog and Damara, and comparison reflected no great honour on the man.”
The same gentleman had a very narrow escape of falling into the merciless hands of a Damara dentist.
“I had occasion to make inquiries for a professional gentleman, a dentist, as one of my teeth had ached so horribly that I could hardly endure it. He was employed at a distance, but I subsequently witnessed, though I did not myself undergo, the exercise of his skill. He brought a piece of the back sinew of a sheep, which forms a kind of catgut, and tied this round the unhappy tooth, and the spare end of the catgut was wound round a stout piece of stick, and this he rolled up tight to the tooth, and then pressed with all his force against the jaw till something gave way. I saw the wretched patient sitting for the rest of the day with his head between his knees and his hands against his temples.”
The Eboes and Kalabeese of Western Africa hold very curious notions respecting the administering of doctor’s drugs. When they bury their dead the sorrowing friends place a tube in the earth communicating with the body of the deceased, and down this tube they, in after times, pour palm wine and other liquids for the sustenance of the soul of the departed, and even medicines, which libations they imagine will produce the same effect upon the offerer as though absorbed by himself. Thus an Eboe will come to a surgeon, “Doctor, me sickee;” and when given the proper medicine, that official must watch the applicant take the dose on the spot, or he will administer it to the shade of his father, making the parental benefits to continue even after death; but strange to say, if given a bottle of rum he becomes suddenly oblivious of his father’s grave, and forgetting that the ashes of the departed may probably appreciate rum as much as palm wine and that the paternal clay may likewise require to be moistened, pours it down his own thorax with the most lively gestures expressive of satisfaction.
A person styled an Abiadiong, or sorcerer, is always consulted in cases of sickness, death, or capital crime, to find out the individual who has brought the malady on his neighbour. He is reputed to derive his knowledge by education, but is not the bearer of a diploma, save one in his title. The Abiadiong squats himself beside the sick man—repeats a number of incantations—tosses strings of beads he has in his hand as an appeal to the spirit he invokes—rubs the beads alternately on his own body and that of the sick man—cogitates and decides. Sometimes the decision is settled by a little copper Palarer beforehand; and, as the Eboe law gives to the possessor of its privileges an unlimited power in this respect, it may be imagined what scenes of blood the system creates and fosters. Alia-lok is the title which, in this country, is given to a doctor of medicine; but the Kalabeese have little faith in drugs, and surgical operations are generally performed by the soft sex. These are confined to two species of cupping—the dry and the bloody—and to enema administering. The dry cupping is effected with a pyreform-calabash upon the breasts of women, whose bodies are chalked over at the same time, to force them to maturity. Razors are used as scarificators in moist cupping the side and temples of persons labouring under, what they suppose to be, congestive diseases. Ulcers are usually dressed by a piece of leaf passed round the diseased part, and fastened by a bamboo stem. A poison bean, with a string through a hole bored in it, is frequently worn as a curative ju-ju round a sore leg—only a modification of the similia similibus curantur system. Perhaps it is to carry out a like idea that dogs are buried in the ground with their heads above the ground, where the poor creatures spend three or four days before nature conquers their power of life, for during this time they are allowed no food. These dogs are generally impounded so before the door of the sick man. When small-pox prevails in some places they dot their bodies over with spots of chalk, perhaps to make the demon of disease believe that they have previously been visited with a skin affection, and that his ground is already occupied.
It seems easy to set up as M.D. among the Indians of North America.
“Any ignorant idler who takes it into his head to become a doctor gives notice of it to the Pawnee world, by assuming a solemn deportment, wearing his robe with the hair outwards, and learning to make a noise in the throat, which is distinctive of his profession and which resembles the sound made by a person who is gargling for the relaxed uvula. Here his medical studies and accomplishments end; and his reputation depends entirely upon the result of his first attempts, and must evidently be altogether fortuitous.”
This is the evidence of the traveller Murray, and he further goes on to back his opinion by quoting two instances of surgical practice that came under his personal observation.
“In great cases, such as a broken leg or mortal disease of a chief, the medicine-men are called in to assist with their mummery, but the treatment of ordinary diseases by these practitioners will be understood by my noting down accurately what took place at the daily and nightly visit of the doctor who attended our chief’s lodge. The patient was one of the children gradually and certainly dying from shameful maltreatment under the hooping-cough. It should however be remembered in exculpation of the Galen, that the parents fed the child three or four times a day with enormous meals of half boiled maize or buffalo meat, each of which acting as an emetic enabled the wretched little sufferer to swallow its successor.
“The learned doctor stalked into the lodge with all the dignified importance of the most practised pulse-feeler, rarely deigning to salute the parents or other inhabitants. He then stooped down over the child, took a little earth in his hand which he moistened with saliva, and with the precious mixture thus formed, he anointed the shoulders, the forehead, and other parts of the child, especially the pit of the stomach; then approaching his mouth, to this last, and covering with his robe his own head and the person of his patient, he commenced the gargling operation, to which I have before alluded. This I have known him frequently to continue for three or four hours at the time, when he left the unfortunate sufferer as he found him without having used friction or embrocation, or administering medicine of any kind whatever.
“It only remains to add respecting the disciples of Æsculapius, that if the patient recovers, their fame is blazed abroad, and they receive in horses, meat, blankets, etc., a fee much higher in proportion to the wealth of any of the parties than was ever given to Sir Astley Cooper, or Sir Henry Halford. If the patient dies, the doctor is considered “bad medicine,” and generally leaves the profession for a year or two, during which time he pursues the ordinary avocations of stealing, hunting, or fighting, until his ill name is forgotten or some fortunate incident has obtained for him a whitewashed reputation.
“I learned that in a hunt a good many Indians had been bruised or wounded, and several horses killed. Among those who were hurt was a chief of some distinction; he had a few ribs and one of his arms broken. The setting of this last, together with the completion of his wound-dressing, was to be accompanied with much ceremony, so I determined to be a spectator. I went accordingly to his lodge where a great crowd was already assembled and with some difficulty made my way through to the inner circle. Not being quite sure that I was permitted to see these mysteries, and being fully aware of the danger of breaking even unintentionally any of their medicine rules, I kept myself as quiet and unobserved as possible. Before the lodge, and in the centre of the semi-circle, sat or rather reclined the wounded man, supported by one or two packs of skins. On each side of him were a row of his kindred; the elder warriors occupied the front, the younger the second places, and behind them, close to the lodge, the boys, squaws, etc. A profound silence was observed, and when all the medicine men and relatives had arrived and taken their seats, a great medicine pipe was brought and passed round with the usual ceremonial observance of a certain number of whiffs to the earth, the buffalo-spirit, and the Great Spirit. The pipe was not handed to the wounded man, probably because he was supposed to be for the time under the influence of a bad spirit, and therefore not entitled to the privileges of the medicine. When this smoking ceremony was concluded, three or four of the doctors or conjurors and a few of the great medicine-men assembled round him; the former proceeded to feel his side and apply some remedy to it, while one of them set the arm, and bound it very strongly round with leather thongs. During this operation the medicine-men stooped over him and went through sundry mummeries which I could not accurately distinguish.
As soon as the bandages and dressings were completed they began a medicine dance around him. At first the movement was slow, and accompanied by a low ordinary chant, but gradually both acquired violence and rapidity, till at length they reached the height of fury and frenzy. They swung their tomahawks round the head of the wounded man, rushed upon him with the most dreadful yells, shook their weapons violently in his face, jumped repeatedly over him, pretending each time to give him the fatal blow, then checking it as it descended, and while once or twice I saw them push and kick his limbs, one of the most excited struck him several severe blows on the breast. On inquiry, I learned that all these gesticulations were intended to threaten and banish the evil spirit which was supposed to have possessed him. While this was going on a complete silence reigned throughout the crowd, none being permitted to dance or yell, except those actually engaged in the medicine ceremonies.
What, however, may be regarded as the Indian’s universal remedy for all ailments is the sweating bath and sudatory; these sudatories are always near the village, above or below it, on the bank of the river. They are generally built of skins, in the form of a Crow or Sioux lodge, covered with buffalo skins sewed tight together, with a kind of furnace in the centre; or, in other words, in the centre of the lodge are two walls of stone about six feet long, and two and a half apart, and about three feet high; across and over this space between the two walls are laid a number of round sticks, on which the bathing crib is placed. Contiguous to the lodge, and outside of it is a little furnace, something similar in the side of the bank, where the woman kindles a hot fire and heats to a red heat a number of large stones, which are kept at these places for this particular purpose; and having them all in readiness, she goes home or sends word to inform her husband or other one who is waiting that all is ready, when he makes his appearance entirely naked, though with a large buffalo robe wrapped around him. He then enters the lodge, and places himself in the basket with his back towards the door of the lodge, when the squaw brings in a large stone red-hot, between two sticks lashed together somewhat in the form of a pair of tongs, and, placing it under him, throws cold water upon it, which raises a profusion of vapour about him. He is at once enveloped in a cloud of steam, and a woman or child will sit at a little distance and continue to dash water upon the stone, whilst the matron of the lodge is out, and preparing to make her appearance with another heated stone; or he will sit and dip from a wooden bowl with a ladle made of the mountain-sheep’s horn, and throw upon the heated stone, with his own hands, the water which he is drawing through his lungs and pores the next moment, in the delectable and exhilarating vapour, as it distils through the mat of wild sage and other medical and aromatic herbs which he had strewed over the bottom of his basket, and on which he reclines.
During all this time the lodge is shut perfectly tight, and he quaffs this delicious and renovating draught to his lungs with deep-drawn sighs, until he is drenched in the most profuse degree of perspiration that can be produced; when he makes a signal, at which the lodge is opened, and he darts forth with the speed of a frightened deer, and plunges headlong into the river, from which he instantly escapes again, wraps his robe around him, and makes as fast as possible for home. Here his limbs are wiped dry and wrapped close and tight within the fur of the buffalo robes, in which he takes his nap, with his feet to the fire, then oils his limbs and hair with bear’s-grease, dresses and plumes himself for a visit, a feast, a parade, or a council.
During Mr. Bruce’s travels through Abyssinia, and while he was sojourning in the dominions of her Majesty of Sennaar, one afternoon he was sent for to the palace, when the king told him that several of his wives were ill, and desired that he would give them his advice, which he promised to do. He was admitted into a large square apartment, very ill-lighted, in which were about fifty women, all perfectly black, without any covering but a very narrow piece of cotton rag about their waist. While he was musing whether or not all these might be queens, or whether there was any queen among them, one of them seized him by the hand and led him into another apartment; this was much better lighted than the first. Upon a large bench, or sofa, covered with blue Surat cloth, sat three persons clothed from the neck to the feet with blue cotton shirts.
One of these, whom Mr. Bruce found to be the favourite, was about six feet high, and corpulent beyond all proportion. She seemed to him, next to the elephant and rhinoceros, to be the largest living creature he had ever met with. Her features were perfectly like those of a negro; a ring of gold passed through her under lip, and weighed it down, till, like a flap, it covered her chin, and left her teeth bare, which were very small and fine. The inside of her lip she had made black with antimony. Her ears reached down to her shoulders, and had the appearance of wings; she had in each of them a large ring of gold, somewhat smaller than a man’s little finger, and about five inches in diameter. The weight of these had drawn down the hole where the ear was pierced so much that three fingers might easily pass above the ring. She had a gold necklace of several rows, one above another, to which were hung rows of sequins pierced. She had on her ancles two manacles of gold, larger than any our traveller had ever seen upon the feet of felons, with which he could not conceive it was possible for her to walk; but afterwards he found they were hollow. The others were dressed pretty much in the same manner; only there was one who had chains which came from her ears to the outside of each nostril, where they were fastened. There was also a ring put through the gristle of her nose, and which hung down to the opening of her mouth. It had altogether something of the appearance of a horse’s bridle. Upon his coming near them, the eldest put her hand to her mouth and kissed it, saying at the same time, in very vulgar Arabic, “Kif-halek howajah?” How do you do, merchant? Mr. Bruce never in his life was more pleased with distant salutations than at this time. He answered, “Peace be among you! I am a physician, and not a merchant.” There was not one part of their whole bodies, inside and outside, in which some of them had not ailments. The three queens insisted upon being blooded, which desire Mr. Bruce complied with, as it was an operation that required short attendance; but, upon producing the lancets, their hearts failed them. They then all called out for the Tabange, which, in Arabic, means a pistol; but what they meant by this word was the cupping-instrument, which goes off with a spring like the snap of a pistol. He had two of these, but not then in his pocket. He sent his servant home, however, to bring one, and, that same evening, performed the operations upon the three queens with great success. The room was overflowed with an effusion of royal blood, and the whole ended with their insisting upon his giving them the instrument itself, which he was obliged to do, after cupping two of their slaves before them, who had no complaints, merely to shew them how the operation was to be performed.
On another occasion there was recommended to his care a certain Welled Amlac. He had with him two servants, one of whom, as well as his master, was ill with an intermitting fever. As our traveller was abundantly supplied with every necessary, the only inconvenience he suffered by this was, that of bringing a stranger and a disease into his family. Being, however, in a strange country himself, and daily standing in need of the assistance of its inhabitants, he perceived the policy of rendering services whenever opportunity offered; and, accordingly, received his two patients with the best possible grace. To this he was the more induced as he was informed that Welled Amlac was of the most powerful, resolute, and best attended robbers in all Maitsha; that this man’s country lay directly in his way to the source of the Nile; and that under his protection he might bid defiance to Woodage Asahel, who was considered as the great obstacle to that journey. After several weeks’ illness the patient recovered. When he first came to Mr. Bruce’s house, he was but indifferently clothed; and having no change, his apparel naturally grew worse, so that when his disease had entirely left him he made a very beggarly appearance indeed. One evening Mr. Bruce remarked that he could not go home to his own country without kissing the ground before the Iteghe, by whose bounty he had been all this time supported. He replied, “Surely not;” adding that he was ready to go whenever Mr. Bruce should think proper to give him his clothes. The latter imagined that Welled Amlac might have brought with him some change of apparel, and delivered it into the custody of our traveller’s servant; but, on farther explanation, he found that his patient had not a rag but what was on his back, and he plainly told Mr. Bruce, that he would rather stay in his house all his life than be so disgraced before the world as to leave it after so long a stay, without his clothing him from head to foot; asking with much confidence: “What signifies your curing me, if you turn me out of your house like a beggar?” Mr. Bruce still thought there was something of jest in this, and meeting Ayto Aylo, told him, laughing, of the conversation that had passed. “There is do doubt,” answered he very gravely, “that you must clothe him; it is the custom.” “And his servant too?” asked Mr. Bruce. “Certainly, his servant too: and if he had ten servants that eat and drank in your house, you must clothe them all.”—“I think,” rejoined our traveller, “that a physician, at this rate, had much better let his patients die than recover them at his own expense.”—“Yagoube,” said his friend, “I see this is not a custom in your country, but here it invariably is, and if you would pass for a man of consequence you cannot avoid complying with it, unless you would make Welled Amlac your enemy. The man is opulent, it is not for the value of the clothes, but he thinks his importance among his neighbours is measured by the respect shewn him by the people afar off. Never fear, he will make you some kind of return; and as for his clothes, I shall pay for them.” “By no means,” replied Mr. Bruce; “I think the custom so curious that the knowledge of it is worth the price of the clothes, and I assure you that, intending as I do to go through the Maitsha, I consider it as a piece of friendship in you to have brought me under this obligation.” After this explanation Mr. Bruce immediately procured the clothes; a girdle, and a pair of sandals, amounting in the whole to about two guineas, which Welled Amlac received with the same indifference as if he had been purchasing them for ready money. He then asked for his servants’ clothes, which he observed were too good, and that he should take them for his own use when he arrived at Maitsha.
In his capacity of physician Mr. Bruce lays down certain simple rules to be observed by persons about to travel into far eastern countries; and though a hundred years old, and more, the said advice is still wholesome, and may be used with advantage by whomsoever it may concern.
Mr. Bruce’s first general advice to a traveller, is to remember well what was the state of his constitution before he visited these countries, and what his complaints were, if he had any; for fear frequently seizes upon the first sight of the many and sudden deaths we see upon our first arrival; and our spirits are so lowered by perpetual perspiration, and our nerves so relaxed, that we are apt to mistake the ordinary symptoms of a disease, familiar to us in our own country, for the approach of one of those terrible distempers that are to hurry us in a few hours into eternity. This has a bad effect in the very slightest disorders; so that it has become proverbial—If you think you shall die you shall die.
If a traveller finds that he is as well after having been some time in this country as he was before entering it, his best way is to make no innovation in his regimen, further than abating something in the quantity. But if he is of a tender constitution, he cannot act more wisely than to follow implicitly the regimen of sober healthy people of the country, without arguing upon European notions, or substituting what we consider succedaneums to what we see used upon the spot. All spirits are to be avoided; even bark is better in water than in wine. The stomach being relaxed by profuse perspiration, needs something to strengthen, not to inflame, and enable it to perform digestion. For this reason (instinct we should call it, if speaking of beasts) the natives of all eastern countries season every species of food, even the simplest and mildest rice, so much with spices, especially with pepper, as absolutely to blister a European palate. These powerful antiseptics providence has planted in these countries for this use; and the natives have, from the earliest time, had recourse to them. And hence, in these dangerous climates, the natives are as healthy as we are in our northern ones.
Our author lays it down, then, as a positive rule of health, that the warmest dishes the natives delight in are the most wholesome strangers can use in the putrid climates of Lower Arabia, Abyssinia, Sennaar, and Egypt itself; and that spirits, and all fermented liquors, should be regarded as poisons; and, for fear of temptation, not so much as be carried along with you, unless as a menstruum for outward applications. Spring or running water, if you can find it, is to be your only drink. You cannot be too nice in procuring this article. But as, on both coasts of the Red Sea, you scarcely find any but stagnant water, the way which our traveller practised, when at any place that allowed time and opportunity, was always this: he took a quantity of fine sand, washed it from the salt quality with which it was impregnated, and spread it upon a sheet to dry; he then nearly filled an oil-jar with water, and poured into it as much from a boiling kettle as would serve to kill all the animalcula and eggs that were in it. He then sifted the dried sand, as slowly as possible, upon the surface of the water in the jar, till the sand stood half a foot at the bottom of it; after letting it settle at night, he drew it off by a hole in the jar with a spigot in it, about an inch above the sand; then threw the remaining sand out upon the cloth, and dried and washed it again. This process is sooner performed than described. The water is as limpid as the purest spring, and little inferior to the finest Spa. Drink largely of this without fear, according as your appetite requires. By violent perspiration the aqueous part of your blood is thrown off; and it is not spirituous liquor that can restore this, whatever momentary strength it may give you from another cause. When hot and almost fainting with weakness from continual perspiration, Mr. Bruce has gone into a warm bath, and been immediately restored to strength, as upon first rising in the morning.
In Nubia, never scruple to throw yourself into the coldest river or spring you can find, in whatever degree of heat you are. The reason of the difference in Europe is that when, by violence, you have raised yourself to an extraordinary degree of heat, the cold water in which you plunge yourself checks your perspiration, and shuts your pores suddenly; the medium is itself too cold, and you do not use force sufficient to bring back the perspiration, which nought but action occasioned: whereas, in these warm countries, your perspiration is natural and constant, though no action be used, only from the temperature of the medium; therefore, though your pores are shut the moment you plunge yourself into the cold water, the simple condition of the outward air again covers you with pearls of sweat the moment you emerge; and you begin the expanse of the aqueous part of your blood afresh from the new stock that you have laid in by your immersion. For this reason, if you are well, deluge yourself from head to foot, even in the house, where the water is plentiful, by directing a servant to throw buckets upon you at least once a day, when you are hottest; not from any imagination that the water braces you, as it is called, for your bracings will last only for a very few minutes: inundations will carry watery particles into your blood, though not equal to bathing in running streams, where the total immersion, the motion of the water, and the action of the limbs, all conspire to the benefit you are in quest of.
Do not fatigue yourself if possible. Exercise is not either so necessary or so salutary here as in Europe. Use fruits sparingly, especially if too ripe. The musa, or banana, in Arabia Felix, are rotten-ripe when they are brought to you. Avoid all sorts of fruits exposed for sale in the markets, as it has probably been gathered in the sun, and carried miles in it, and all its juices are in a state of fermentation. Lay it first upon a table covered with a coarse cloth, and throw frequently a quantity of water upon it; and, if you have an opportunity, gather it in the dew of the morning before dawn of day, for then it is far better.
War Dance of the New Zealanders.