Angola and the River Congo, vol. 2

by Joachim John Monteiro

Natives who smoke “diamba” immoderately, and make themselves slaves to the habit, have their brains affected in time, and become stupid and listless. When they arrive at this stage, they are “fetished” like drunkards. The Portuguese prohibit their slaves from indulging in this habit. The plant is cultivated round the huts everywhere in Angola, but except in the cold season diamba-smoking is not very general.

The natives have no efficient remedies or treatment for bronchitis, pleurisy, and pneumonia, from which they suffer so much and so fatally in the cold season. They chew the stem of a kind of rush growing in streams and marshy places, the juice of which has an agreeable taste of acetic acid, and make a few emulcent drinks from the leafless parasite Cassytha, a large mallow, and the seed-heads of the sangue-sangue; these, and rubbing the chest with “tacula” mixed with a pulp of the bruised leaves of “Herva Santa Maria,” “Ensuso-ensuso,” “Brucutu,” and other plants, are their only applications. With slaves or other blacks under the care of Europeans, only the most energetic medical treatment will save their lives when attacked by these complaints, so dangerous and rapid is the effect on their constitutions.

Ophthalmia, or any affection of the eyes, is extremely rare in Angola, either amongst natives or Europeans, which is singular, considering that the littoral region is so white and sandy in many places.

A kind of itch called “sarna” is very common among the blacks: it appears as little watery pustules on the hands and feet, and, in severe cases, on the elbows and knees, and on the arms and legs. These pustules break into sores, which become covered with matter and scales, and are accompanied by a little swelling and pain, but not much itching. It does not appear to be contagious, and I was unable to find acari in several cases that I examined under the microscope.

I believe it is principally the result of dirt and filth, but is not always so, as the Cabindas and the cleaner tribes have it, although not to such an extent as tribes like the Mushicongos, who are so much dirtier in their habits. Europeans are almost sure to have it after some years’ residence in the country, and I have known this to be the case with some who were scrupulously clean in their persons and habits. It readily gives way to sulphur ointment, and the blacks have no native remedy so efficacious as this, which is therefore often asked for by them.

I remember, on my first arrival in Africa, witnessing a little episode that produced some impression on my then inexperienced mind. I saw one morning, from my window at Bembe, a black woman and a little girl go out into the enclosure at the back of my neighbour’s house, both carrying kitchen pots and pans, plates, and cups and saucers, which they placed ready for washing up on the usual “tarimba,” a kind of table or framework of sticks on four uprights, to be seen in every yard for this purpose. Before going on with her work, however, the woman stripped the child naked, and proceeded with both hands to rub her little body all over with sulphur ointment, she being covered from head to foot with this “sarna.” When she had thoroughly rubbed in the ointment to her satisfaction, she deliberately, without even so much as wiping her hands on a rag, poured some water into a frying-pan and cleaned it with her hands; she did the same with the rest of the pans and crockery, and left them to drain on the “tarimba” ready for preparing her master’s breakfast!

I afterwards, in the course of time, had any little squeamishness or prejudices that I had brought with me from England rubbed off by other instances of similar insignificant negligences on the part of the black cooks in Africa. I once found a fine cutting of a big-toe nail on a beefsteak; another time, a round head with a beak and large eyes, and a body of an indistinct and cloudy nature, in a rice-pudding, from a half-hatched egg having been stirred into it in its manufacture; and in a roast fowl I was disappointed in cutting open what I fondly thought was its stuffed breast, to find that it was the poor hen’s crop, full of indian-corn, cockroaches, and a fine centipede. I also, as I have said before, once saw my cook at Ambriz making some forcemeat-balls quite round and smooth by rolling them with the palm of his hand on his naked stomach!

Another skin disease, principally attacking children, and said to be very contagious, appears in the form of little bladders filled with water. The treatment for this disease is to touch the vesicles with caustic, when they soon heal; but the natives adopt a barbarous and painful process, which is to rub them off with a rough indian-corn cob and sand and water, and then cover the raw places with powdered malachite and lime-juice. When at Bembe, my wife was horrified at finding two or three women busily engaged in the cure of this complaint on a child near a very pretty pool of water, to which we had gone to collect butterflies; but instead of using a corn cob, they were actually scraping the poor, yelling little unfortunate’s sores with a piece of sharp potsherd! It is, however, satisfactory to know that the treatment, although cruel, is efficacious.

The purgatives made use of by the negroes are the castor-oil seeds ground and mixed with a little water, and the juice of the plant bearing the physic-nut (Jatropha curcas). This is collected on a leaf from a cut made in the stem of the plant, and at once swallowed;—from five to ten drops appear to be a dose.

Epsom-salts are a very favourite medicine of the blacks living with the white men near the coast, and I have seen them take a great mugful of a strong solution of this salt without making a wry face. They are also very fond of being cupped for any pain, and it is rare to see a man or woman whose back or shoulders do not bear signs of this operation.