The pungent and penetrating odors produced no effect except to cause the sufferer to turn his head and moan.
“Delirium chains his physical senses,” said the shaman, when Orondo opened his eyes without recognizing any one.
In their own peculiar fashion, the chief and his two assistants examined the seven principal organs of the body—the same that are symbolized by the curls of Medusa, and whose appetites must be controlled before there can be health either on the physical or the mental planes.
“Extreme heat, and a labored and painful drawing in of the breath is here,” said the chief, while one assistant carefully wrote down his words.
It was compulsory upon healers to post in a conspicuous place on the temple walls to which they were attached the number of cures made, and by what processes. Orondo being a civic leader, the law required that his malady should be written on the tablet back of the Chief Councilor’s chair in the Temple of the Sun.
“Pains in all the bones, and in the cords which give them motion,” he continued. “The air-bellows rise and fall one-half, and the hammer in the left breast moves slowly and is very weak. Lend a hand.”
The scribe hastily put down his parchment and assisted in placing Orondo in a hammock, hung in the full glare of the sun, in a circular, glass-sided room. The sick man was quickly stripped to the waist, and the shamans took turns in holding first a large red convex lens over the region of the heart and lungs; then an orange-colored one; and finally a yellow-green ray of light was concentrated over the heart, to stimulate its retarded action. This process will be recognized as the forerunner of the modern X-Ray.
Then by what is now known as the Swedish movement, they went over the entire body, keeping the lenses focused on the parts being kneaded and rubbed. When this treatment ceased, they carried him back to his wall-pallet, taking care to lay his head to the north, thus taking advantage of the magnetic currents.
A small oblong bit of copper was placed in an olla of snow-water. It was fastened by a silken-cord to a copper anklet clasped above the patient’s left foot. Over the main artery was a small disk of copper with Orondo’s seal on the outside.
“Squeeze the sponge gently, and slip it under the signet,” directed the head physician.