It is a very crafty performance. The person’s blood is sucked, and the threads are shown, and if he does not have smallpox, then the “doctor” has the credit of having drawn all the witchcraft out of him. If, however, he has smallpox, then he has his own witchcraft in him and that has caused the illness, and the only way to ensure recovery is to confess his guilt—this exonerates the “doctor.” If no threads are seen in the blood and the person has smallpox, then his own witchcraft has given it, and he must confess; and here again the “doctor” is cleared. Now if a person has not been operated upon by the “doctor” and gets smallpox, he must confess to bewitching others, and should he recover, well, his confession has cured him; should he die, then either he has not fully confessed, or someone else has bewitched him to death. If a person does not catch smallpox, then he is not bewitched by anyone, and he himself has no witchcraft.
During an epidemic of smallpox at Monsembe in 1893 it was absolutely impossible to isolate patients, for, according to their belief regarding infectious diseases—that no one would have it unless he were bewitched to have it—there was no need for isolation. I have seen the hut of a patient literally crowded with women, lads, and girls, giving advice and showing sympathy with the sick. Many died from the loathsome disease.
This particular “doctor” also looks at the arteries in the stomach of a dead person to discover whether the person died by his or her own witchcraft, or by the witchcraft of another. For full details see the chapter on “Death and Burial,” where it deals with death by witchcraft.
A person suffering from sleeping-sickness has his own special “doctor” to look after him. He scarifies the body of the patient with numerous cuts, and then sprinkles hot water over him, rubs pepper paste into the cuts, and puts a drop or two of pepper juice in each eye. This practitioner is called by the natives nganga ya luwa—the medicine man of sleeping-sickness, or of the spirit that causes that complaint.
There are many cases of debility, lack of energy, and anæmia in which the symptoms are somewhat similar to sleeping-sickness, such as drowsiness, no desire to move about, loss of appetite, etc. Such cases are greatly benefited by the massage of warm water and pepper paste, and by the change of scene and life necessitated by the visit to the “doctor’s” village; and when the patients return to their own towns after four or five weeks’ treatment, much better and sometimes quite well, they are regarded by the natives as cured cases of sleeping-sickness. The pepper juice in the eyes causes great agony, but it keeps the patient awake and moving about. The “doctor” puts various taboos on his patients, both as to what they shall eat and how their food shall be cooked.
My wife had a girl about fifteen years of age who fell a victim to sleeping-sickness. She was smart in her house-work, intelligent and quick in school, and neat and clean in her person. She gradually lost her smartness, forgot all she gained in school, and became dirty and slovenly in her dress, etc. She also had a temperature every morning of about 100 degrees that yielded to no treatment. It was an undoubted case of sleeping-sickness, but as it occurred in 1894 not much was known of the complaint, and there were very few suggestions as to treatment. Those suggestions, however, we followed, and the patient became no better for tonics, bromide of potassium, etc. I was then told about this kind of “doctor,” and finding there was nothing really objectionable in his mode of procedure I asked the girl if she would like to undergo his treatment. She readily expressed her wish to be put under him, and seemed to have great faith in him. The girl went, and I watched the treatment with much interest. At first she brightened up under the pepper massage, but at last she died in our house, for finding the treatment failed we brought her, at her own desire, back to our house.
It is needless to say that I never came across a single case of true sleeping-sickness cured by this class of “doctors.” There are some curious contradictions about this complaint. In some cases there is loss of appetite, and in others a ravenous hunger; in some great drowsiness, and it is almost impossible to keep the patient awake, in others entire insomnia; in some saneness to the last, but others exhibit insanity and even violent madness.
When a boy or girl is very thin and weakly, his father kills a monkey, or buys a large piece of meat or a big fish and sends for the medicine man, who has a reputation for conversing with the spirits of unborn children (called bingbongbo), and interpreting their demands. On his arrival he shuts himself up in one of his client’s houses and is heard to speak with these spirits. After a time he comes out and tells his client that the spirits complain because he has never given them a feast, and that if he desires to see his son improve in health he must at once prepare one for them.
Photo by: Rev. R. H. Kirkland
A Charm for Increasing the Birth Rate
The scarcity of children in the Libinza Lake villages alarmed the inhabitants considerably, so they paid a large sum to a witch-doctor to set up this fetish that their progeny might be increased.