The Healing Craft of many of the northern tribes of Australia is thus described by Mr. Palmer:—
“Among the northern tribes many devices and charms are resorted to in the cases of pains and sickness. The doctors are men who, it is supposed, possess great powers of healing, some of which they obtain from the spirits. They use stones and crystals to put away sickness from any one, and sometimes they bandage the afflicted part with string tightly till no part of the skin is visible. One common plan of alleviating pain is by bleeding, supposing that the pain comes away with the blood. For this minute cuts are made through the skin with pieces of broken flint, or the edge of a broken mussel-shell, over the part affected, and the blood is wiped off with a stick. Sometimes the doctor ties a string from the sick place, say the chest, and rubs the end of it across his gums, spitting into a kooliman of water, and passing the string through also; he then points to the blood in the water as evidence of his skill in drawing it from the sick person. Stones are sucked out with the mouth, and exhibited as having been taken from the body. A good number of plants are used in sickness as drinks, and for external application. A broken arm is cured with splints made of bark and wound round tightly. Snake-bite is cured by scarifying and sucking the wound, and by then using a poultice of box-bark, bruised and heated.”[77]
Mr. E. Palmer says that “the Australian aborigines possessed a considerable knowledge of indigenous plants, and their acquaintance with natural history was very accurate. They could only have obtained this knowledge by close observation and generations of experience. With the extermination of the blacks this information has completely died out, and it can only now be obtained in far-distant places like North Queensland, where the aborigines have not been killed off by contact with civilization. They have much experience in the healing virtues and properties of plants, as also of the kinds best suited for poisoning fish.”[78] Great skill is exhibited by their mode of preparing plants by fire and water and other processes, before using them as food; if partaken of in their natural state, many of them would be very deleterious, if not actually poisonous. The Dioscorea sativa, or karro plant, has large tubers, which are first roasted, then broken in water and strained or squeezed through fine bags made of fibre into long bark troughs, then the product is washed in many waters, the sediment is well stirred while the water is poured in; by this means the bitter principle is extracted, and a yellow fecula like hominy is produced. Careya australis has a root which is used to poison fish, though its fruit is eaten uncooked by the natives. Manna is gathered from Eucalyptus terminalis. Cymbidium caniculatum is used for dysentery and other bowel disorders. The nuts of the Cycas media are very poisonous unless prepared by fire and water, and then they can be used as food. The seeds of Entada scandens are only fit for eating after baking and pounding, as is the case with many other plants cleverly manipulated by the blacks. The leaves of Ocimum sanctum are infused in water and drunk for sickness. A wash is made from the bruised bark of the gutta-percha tree, Excæcaria parviflora. The leaves of Loranthus quandong, the mistletoe of the Acacia hemalophylla, are infused in water and drunk for fevers, ague, etc.; it is doubtful whether they have any virtue, but mistletoe was once a very highly prized medicine in Europe, though now wholly obsolete. The leaves of Melaleuca leucadendron are used in infusion for headache, colds, and general sickness. The melaleuca is the cajeput tree, and cajeput oil is undoubtedly a valuable medicine. Stillé says, “It is of marked utility in cases of nervous vomiting, nervous dysphagia, dyspnœa, and hiccup.”[79] Externally it is valuable in nervous headache and neuralgia.
The natives make great use medicinally of the various species of eucalyptus. The leaves of Eucalyptus tetradonta are made into a drink for fevers and sickness with headache, etc. The Eucalyptus globulus recently introduced into civilized medicine comes from Australia. Plectranthus congestus, Pterocaulon glandulosus, Gnaphalium luteo-album (several of this species are used in European medicine in bronchitis and diarrhœa, and one of them is called “Life Everlasting”), Heliotropium ovalifolium, and Moschosma polystachium, are all used in the medical practice of these despised aborigines, and are probably quite as valuable as the majority of the herbs recommended in our old herbals and pharmacopœias.
The aborigines of the north-western provinces of South America have long been famous for their extensive knowledge of the properties of medicinal plants, and even now they possess secrets for which we may envy them.[80]
The arrow-poison used by the Indians of the interior is made from a plant of the strychnos family. Those of the Pacific coast prepare a poison from the secretion exuding from the skin of a small frog; this by a certain process of decomposition they convert into a powerful blood-poison. It is said that when these tribes were preparing poisons for use in time of war, it was their ancient practice to test their efficacy on the old women of the tribe, and not on the lower animals, exhibiting in this respect a superior knowledge of toxicology than is shown by those pharmacologists of our own day who test on animals the drugs they propose administering to man. Mr. R. B. White, in his notes on these aboriginal tribes, says that the Indians in the State of Antioquia were in the habit of poisoning the salt springs in the time of the Spanish invasion; they covered the spring with branches of a tree called the “Doncel,” which imparted such venomous properties to the water that after a lapse of three hundred years it still retains its deadly properties; when animals now get at the water, as many as three horses have been known to be killed in one night by drinking it.[81]
The study of the means of capturing fish by poisoning the water—a practice which is universal amongst savages—must have led to many observations on the properties of poisonous plants. Some considerable knowledge of the risks and uses of various leaves and berries must have been acquired in this way. The people of Timor-laut intoxicate fish with rice steeped in poisonous climbing plants.[82]
The aborigines of the River Darling, New South Wales, feed their very sick and weak patients upon blood drawn from the bodies of their male friends. It is generally taken raw by the invalid, sometimes however it is slightly cooked by putting hot ashes in it.[83]
The practice is disgusting, but scarcely more so than one which was prescribed a few years ago by the great physicians of Paris, who ordered their anæmic patients to drink hot blood from the slaughtered oxen at the abattoirs. Mr. Bonney says that the aborigines referred to willingly bleed themselves till they are weak and faint to provide the food they consider necessary for the sick person.
The acacias are very abundant in Australia, in India, and Africa. This order of plants produces gum arabic and gum Senegal. The Tasmanians use the gum of Acacia sophora as a food.