[24] An experienced medical man from West Africa informs me that he considers the Africans very liable to hysterical disease, and he attributes the throwing backwards to the patient’s desire not to spoil his or her face, a thing ladies are especially careful of, and says that turning a lady face downwards on the sand is as efficacious in breaking up the hysterical fit as throwing water over their clothes is with us.
[25] Negro lethargy; Maladie du sommeil; Enfermedad del sueno; Nelavane (Oulof); Dadane (Sereres); Toruahebue (Mendi); Ntolo (Fjort).
[26] System of Medicine. Volume II. Edited by Dr. Clifford Allbutt. Macmillan & Co., 1897.
[27] Angola and the River Congo. Macmillan. Vol. i., p. 144.
CHAPTER IX
THE WITCH DOCTOR
African Medicine mainly from the point of view of the Witch Doctor.
We will now leave the village apothecary and his methods, and turn to the witch doctor, the consulting physician. He of course knows all about the therapeutic action of low-grade spirits, such as dwell in herbs and so on; but he knows more—namely the actions of higher spirits on the human soul, and the disorders of the human soul into the bargain.