One of the principal offices of the native conjuror is to find out the reason of sickness and death, or of any misfortune or disaster happening to the tribesfolk. But in this matter of primitive medicine, the Eskimo are probably far behind the untutored folk of other uncivilised peoples, for the simple reason that, unlike the dwellers in temperate or tropical and therefore vegetated regions of the world, they have nothing with which to experiment, in sickness, by way of herbs and simples. An absolutely barren land, covered for the most part of the year with snow, provides no material for the empirical pharmacist. Eskimo medical practice consists entirely in incantation, in dealings with the spirit world, and in the exercise of an amazing and complicated system of fetish and taboo, i.e., the doing or refraining from doing all sorts of unreasonable things to attain or produce some desired end. In surgery, the conjuror is no less intrepid, if considerably more lucky (thanks to an air so pure as to be almost sterile) than the ghastly practitioners of West Africa, whose appalling anatomical ventures are described in Mary Kingsley’s unrivalled book of travel in the Cameroons.
An Eskimo Woman of the Fox Channel Tribe.
She is wearing very elaborate bead work on the back of her deerskin dress.
An Eskimo Summer Encampment.
These tents, although large, are easily packed and moved.
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The arctic folk seem to have no glimmering of an idea as to natural cause and effect in sickness. Bodily ills and death, to them, admit of only one explanation. The sufferer has in some way or other in some particular transgressed the communal law. The disorders of women are considered as a punishment for the infringement of some of the meticulous regulations laid down for their observance at certain times. Hence the first business of the conjuror on being summoned to a sick bed, is to scare or worry the invalid into the remembrance and acknowledgment of whatever he or she may have done contrary to the general well-being of the village. He does this after his usual fashion, by crawling into the igloo in some particularly horrid guise, and sitting down in the darkened place with his face to the wall and his features well concealed by his hood, giving vent to the most horrific howls, mutterings, ventriloquisms and unhuman-sounding noises, at his ingenious command. Then he proceeds to interrogate the sick person, and of course wrings some acknowledgment from him or her. Treatment—of sorts—may ensue; but as a rule the issue of commands as to atonement or compensation is the wind-up of what the Americans would aptly describe as the whole “stunt.” Occasionally a piece of flaming moss wick from one of the lamps is laid upon the painful part of the sufferer’s body and fanned with the conjuror’s breath, or merely blown up into the air. All real attempt at cure is left to nature, and it must be added that the recuperative [[226]]powers of a hearty-eating, hardy, healthy-blooded people like the tribes of Eskimo, are quite remarkable.
Eskimo flesh has wonderful healing power. The writer has seen the most fearful gashes quickly close and heal up without any precautions or dressing whatever. One case he certainly thought would have a fatal termination. A hunter was repairing his implements, a small box of tools lying on the ground beside him. A large file without a handle happened to be sticking straight up out of the box. The man’s foot slipped on the ice and he fell, in a sitting posture, straight upon the file. He sustained a deep punctured wound. It was merely bandaged with some very dirty strips of soiled skin underclothing, and inflammation and intense suppuration presently set in. At no time did the wound receive any further attention, but in due course the hunter was about again, as though nothing had happened.