REMEDIES.
The _Materia Medica_ of the Indians consists of various roots and
plants known to themselves, the properties of which they are not fond
of disclosing to strangers. They make considerable use of the barks
of trees, such as the white and black oak, the white walnut, of which
they make pills, the cherry, dogwood, maple, birch, and several others.
They prepare and compound these medicines in different ways, which they
keep a profound secret. Those preparations are frequently mixed with
superstitious practices, calculated to guard against the powers of
witchcraft, in which, unfortunately, they have a strong fixed belief.
Indeed, they are too apt to attribute the most natural deaths to the
arts and incantations of sorcerers, and their medicine is, in most
cases, as much directed against those as against the disease itself.
There are, however, practitioners among them who are free from these
prejudices, or at least do not introduce them into their practice of
the medical art. Still there is a superstitious notion, in which all
their physicians participate, which is, that when an emetic is to be
administered, the water in which the potion is mixed must be drawn up a
stream, and if for a cathartic downwards. This is, at least, innocent,
and not more whimsical perhaps, nor more calculated to excite a smile,
than some theories of grave and learned men in civilised countries.
In fevers the Indians usually administer emetics which are made up and
compounded in various ways. I saw an emetic once given to a man who had
poisoned himself with the root of the May Apple.[194] It consisted of
a piece of raccoon skin burned with the hair on and finely powdered,
pounded dry beans and gunpowder. These three ingredients were mixed
with water and poured down the patient’s throat. This brought on a
severe vomiting, the poisonous root was entirely discharged and the man
cured.
In other complaints, particularly in those which proceed from rheumatic
affections, bleeding and sweating are always the first remedies
applied. The sweat oven is the first thing that an Indian has recourse
to when he feels the least indisposed; it is the place to which the
wearied traveller, hunter, or warrior looks for relief from the
fatigues he has endured, the cold he has caught, or the restoration of
his lost appetite.
This oven is made of different sizes, so as to accommodate from two
to six persons at a time, or according to the number of men in the
village, so that they may be all successively served. It is generally
built on a bank or slope, one half of it within and the other above
ground. It is well covered on the top with split plank and earth, and
has a door in front, where the ground is level to go or rather to
creep in. Here, on the outside, stones, generally of about the size
of a large turnip, are heated by one or more men appointed each day
for that purpose. While the oven is heating, decoctions from roots
or plants are prepared either by the person himself who intends to
sweat, or by one of the men of the village, who boils a large kettleful
for the general use, so that when the public cryer going his rounds,
calls out _Pimook!_ “go to sweat!” every one brings his small kettle,
which is filled for him with the potion, which at the same time serves
him as a medicine, promotes a profuse perspiration, and quenches his
thirst. As soon as a sufficient number have come to the oven, a number
of the hot stones are rolled into the middle of it, and the sweaters
go in, seating themselves or rather squatting round those stones, and
there they remain until the sweat ceases to flow; then they come out,
throwing a blanket or two about them that they may not catch cold; in
the mean while, fresh heated stones are thrown in for those who follow
them. While they are in the oven, water is now and then poured on the
hot stones to produce a steam, which they say, increases the heat, and
gives suppleness to their limbs and joints. In rheumatic complaints,
the steam is produced by a decoction of boiled roots, and the patient
during the operation is well wrapped up in blankets, to keep the cold
air from him, and promote perspiration at the same time.
Those sweat ovens are generally at some distance from an Indian
village, where wood and water are always at hand. The best order is
preserved at those places. The women have their separate oven in a
different direction from that of the men, and subjected to the same
rules. The men generally sweat themselves once and sometimes twice a
week; the women have no fixed day for this exercise, nor do they use it
as often as the men.
In the year 1784,[195] a gentleman whom I had been acquainted with
at Detroit, and who had been for a long time in an infirm state of
health, came from thence to the village of the Christian Indians on the
Huron river, in order to have the benefit of the sweat oven. It being
in the middle of winter, when there was a deep snow on the ground,
and the weather was excessively cold, I advised him to postpone his
sweating to a warmer season; but he persisting in his resolution, I
advised him by no means to remain in the oven longer than fifteen or
at most twenty minutes. But when he once was in it, feeling himself
comfortable, he remained a full hour, at the end of which he fainted,
and was brought by two strong Indians to my house, in very great pain
and not able to walk. He remained with me until the next day, when we
took him down in his sleigh to his family at Detroit. His situation
was truly deplorable; his physicians at that place gave up all hopes
of his recovery, and he frequently expressed his regret that he had
not followed my advice. Suddenly, however, a change took place for the
better, and he not only recovered his perfect health, but became a
stout corpulent man, so that he would often say, that his going into
the sweat oven was the best thing he had ever done in his life for the
benefit of his health. He said so to me fifteen years afterwards when I
saw him in the year 1798. He had not had the least indisposition since
that time. He died about the year 1814, at an advanced age.