The negroes use the prickly ash, or toothache shrub (Xanthoxylum fraxineum), as a blood purifier, especially in the spring. It has long been officinal in the United States Pharmacopœia, and is considered highly serviceable in chronic rheumatism.
The shrubby trefoil (Ptelea trifoliata) is a North American shrub, much valued in dyspepsia, and as a stimulant in the typhoid state. Its active principle is berberine.
The above are merely a few examples taken at random of the valuable medicinal plants used by savages and primitive peoples.
Thus, as might have been expected, the discovery of the Americas led to the introduction of many new drugs into medical practice.
Savages eat enormously.
Wrangel says each of the Yakuts ate in a day six times as many fish as he could eat. Cochrane describes a five-year-old child of this race as devouring three candles, several pounds of sour frozen butter, and a large piece of yellow soap, and adds: “I have repeatedly seen a Yakut, or a Yongohsi, devour forty pounds of meat in a day.”[86]
Yet the savage is less powerful than the civilized man. “He is unable,” says Spencer, “to exert suddenly as great an amount of force, and he is unable to continue the expenditure of force for so long a time.”
CHAPTER VI.
PRIMITIVE SURGERY.
Arrest of Bleeding.—The Indian as Surgeon.—Stretchers, Splints, and Flint Instruments.—Ovariotomy.—Brain Surgery.—Massage.—Trepanning.—The Cæsarean Operation.—Inoculation.