It has been said of many savage peoples that they recognise no natural death, but believe that all deaths not due to violence are due to black magic. No such statement can be made of the Kayans; few, if any, deaths are ascribed by them to the efforts of sorcerers. Natural death is recognised as inevitable in old age, and disease is vaguely conceived as the effect of natural causes; though as to what those natural causes are they have no definite ideas. This attitude is shown by their readiness to make use of European drugs and of remedies for external application. Quinine for fever, and sulphate of copper for the treatment of yaws, are most in demand. Cholera and smallpox are the great epidemic diseases which have ravaged large areas of Borneo from time to time. The Kayans recognise that both these diseases spread up river from village to village, and that to abstain from intercourse with all villages lower down river and to prevent any one coming up river contributes to their immunity. With this object the people of a tributary stream will fell trees across its mouth or lower reaches so as to block it completely to the passage of boats, or, as a less drastic measure, will stretch a rope of rattan from bank to bank as a sign that no one may enter (Pl. 183). Such a sign is generally respected by the inhabitants of other parts of the river-basin. They are aware also of the risk of infection that attends the handling of a corpse of one who has died of epidemic disease, and they attempt to minimise it by throwing a rope around it and dragging it to the graveyard, and there burying it in a shallow grave in the earth, without touching it with the hands.[183]
The Kayans have some slight knowledge of the medicinal properties of some herbs, and make general use of them. They administer as an aperient a decoction of the leaves of a certain plant, called OROBONG, which they cultivate for the purpose on their farms. The root of the ginger plant is used both internally and for external application. A variety of vegetable products are used in preparing liniments; the basis most in request for these is the fat of the python and of other snakes, but wild pig's fat is used as a more easily obtainable substitute.
There is a small common squirrel (SCIURUS EXILIS), the testicles of which are strikingly large in proportion to his body. These organs are dried and reduced to powder, and this powder, mixed with pig's fat, is rubbed over the back and loins in cases of impotence.[184]
Kayan mothers treat colic in their children by chewing the dried root of a creeper (known as PADO TANA) with betel nut, and spitting out the juice on the belly of the patient.
Some of the coastwise Klemantans make use of a bitter decoction of a certain creeper as a remedy for jungle fever. It is asserted by Kayans and others that the Punans make use of the poison of the IPOH tree (the poison used on their darts) as an internal remedy for fever. It is said also (probably with truth, we think) that the Punans also apply the IPOH poison to snake-bites and to festering wounds.[185]
Surgery
Broken limbs are bound round with neat splints made of thin slips of bamboo tied in parallel series. Little effort is made to bring the broken ends of the bones into their proper positions or to reduce dislocations. Abscesses are not usually opened with the knife, but are rather encouraged to point, and are then opened by pressure. A cold poultice of chopped leaves is applied to a bad boil or superficial abscess, and it is protected from blows and friction by a small cage of slips of rattan. Festering wounds are dressed with the chewed leaves or the juice of the tobacco plant, or are washed with a solution of common salt. But a clean wound is merely bound up with a rag; or, if there is much haemorrhage, wood ashes are first applied. They practise no more efficient methods for arresting haemorrhage.
Headache is treated by tugging the hair of the scalp in small bundles in systematic order. Massage of the muscles is practised for the relief of pain, and massage is applied to the abdomen in cases of obstinate constipation; in certain cases they claim to break up hard lumps in the belly by squeezing them with the hands. Bodily aches and fatigue are relieved by pulling and bending the parts of the limbs until all the joints crack in turn.
Cupping is perhaps the most frequently practised surgical operation. Severe internal bruising from falls or heavy blows is the usual occasion. The operation is performed by scratching the skin with the point of a knife, and then applying the mouth of a bamboo cup previously heated over the fire. The cup is a piece of bamboo some five or six inches in length and an inch or rather more in diameter. Its edge is thinned and smoothed. Several of these may be simultaneously applied in a case of extensive bruising. Since this operation, like tatuing, involves the shedding of blood, some small offering, such as a few beads, must be made to the patient by the operator.
The Kayans have distinct numerals up to ten (JI, DUA, TELO, PAT, LIMER, NAM, TUSU, SAYA, PITAN, PULU). Those from eleven to nineteen are formed by prefixing PULU ( = ten) to the names of the digits; and those from twenty to twenty-nine by prefixing DUA PULU ( = two twenty); and so on up to JI ATOR ( = one hundred). Two hundred is DUA ATOR, three hundred is TELO ATOR, and so on up to MIBU ( = one thousand). All or most of the other tribes (except the Punans) have a similar system of numerals, though the numbers beyond the first ten are little used. In counting any objects that cannot be held in the hand or placed in a row, the Kayan (and most of the other peoples) bends down one finger for each object told off or enumerated, beginning with the little finger of the right hand, passing at six to that of the left hand, and then to the big toe of the right foot, and lastly to that of the left foot. When all the names or objects have been mentioned, he holds the toe reached until he or some one else has told off the number; if the number was, say, seventeen, he would keep hold of the second toe of the left foot until he had counted up the number implied by that toe, either by means of counting or by adding up five and five and five and two; unless the count ends on the little toe of the left foot, when he knows at once that the number is twenty. If a larger number than twenty is to be counted, as when, for example, a chief has to pay in tax for each door of his house, he calls in the aid of several men, who sit before him. One of these tells off his fingers and toes as the chief utters the names of the heads of the rooms; and when twenty have been counted in this way, a second man begins on his fingers, while the first continues to hold on to all his toes. A third and a fourth man may be used in the same way to complete the count; and when it is completed, the total is found by reckoning each man as two tens, and adding the number of fingers and toes held down by the last man. The reckoning of the tens is done by addition rather than multiplication. Both multiplication and division are almost unknown operations.