AFRICAN MEDICINE
Mainly from the point of view of the native apothecary, to which is
added some account of the sleep disease and the malignant
melancholy.
There is, as is in all things West African, a great deal of fetish
ceremonial mixed up with West African medical methods. Underlying them
throughout there is the fetish form of thought; but it is erroneous to
believe that all West African native doctors are witch doctors, because
they are not. One of my Efik friends, for example, would no more think
of calling in a witch doctor for a simple case of rheumatism than you
would think of calling in a curate or a barrister; he would just call in
the equivalent to our general practitioner, the abiabok. If he grew
worse instead of better, he would then call in his equivalent to our
consulting physician, the witch doctor, the abiadiong. But if he started
being ill with something exhibiting cerebral symptoms he would have in
the witch doctor at once.
This arises from the ground principle of all West African physic.
Everything works by spirit on spirit, therefore the spirit of the
medicine works on the spirit of the disease. Certain diseases are
combatable by certain spirits in certain herbs. Other diseases are
caused by spirits not amenable to herb-dwelling spirits; they must be
tackled by spirits of a more powerful grade. The witch doctor who
belongs to the school of Nkissism will become more profound on this
matter still, and will tell you all herbs, indeed everything that comes
out of the Earth, have in them some of the power of the Earth, Nkissi
nisi; but the general view is the less concrete one--that it is a matter
of only certain herbs having power. This I have been told over and over
again in various West Coast tongues by various West African physicians,
and in it lies the key to their treatment of disease--a key without
which many of their methods are incomprehensible, but which shows up
most clearly in the methods of the witch doctor himself. In the practice
of the general practitioner, or, more properly speaking, the apothecary,
it is merely a theory, just as a village chemist here may prescribe blue
pill without worrying himself about its therapeutic action from a
scientific point of view.
Before I pass on to the great witch doctor, the
physician, I must detain you with a brief account of the
neglected-by-traveller-because-less-showy African village apothecary, a
really worthy person, who exists in every West African district I know
of; often, as in the Calabar and Bonny region, a doctor whose practice
extends over a fair-sized district, wherein he travels from village to
village. If he comes across a case, he sits down and does his best with
it, may be for a fortnight or a month at a time, and when he has
finished with it and got his fee, off he goes again. Big towns, of
course, have a resident apothecary, but I never came across a town that
had two apothecaries. It may be professional etiquette, but, though I
never like to think evil of the Profession whatever colour its
complexion may be, it may somehow be connected with a knowledge of the
properties of herbs, for I observed when at Corisco that an apothecary
from the mainland who was over there for a visit shrank from dining with
the local medico.
These apothecaries are, as aforesaid, learned in the properties of
herbs, and they are the surgeons, in so far as surgery is ventured on. A
witch doctor would not dream of performing an operation. Amongst these
apothecaries there are lady doctors, who, though a bit dangerous in
pharmacy, yet, as they do not venture on surgery, are, on the whole,
safer than their _confreres_, for African surgery is heroic.
Many of the apothecaries' medical methods are fairly sound, however. The
Dualla practitioner is truly great on poultices for extracting foreign
substances from wounds, such as bits of old iron cooking pot, a very
frequent foreign substance for a man to get into him in West Africa,
owing to pots being broken up and used as bullets. Almost incredible
stories are told by black men and white in Cameroons concerning the
efficiency of these poultices; one I heard from a very reliable white
authority there of a man who had been shot with bits of iron pot in the
thigh. The white doctor extracted several pieces, and declared he had
got them all out; but the man went on suffering and could not walk, so
finally a country doctor was called in, and he applied his poultice. In
a few minutes he removed it, and on its face lay two pieces of iron pot.
The white doctor said they had been in the poultice all the time, but he
did not carry public opinion with him, for the patient recovered
rapidly.
The Negroes do not seem to me to go in for baths in medical treatment
quite so much as the Bantu; they hold more with making many little
incisions in the skin round a swollen joint, then encasing it with clay
and keeping a carefully tended fire going under it. But the Bantu is
given greatly to baths, accompanied by massage, particularly in the
treatment of that great West African affliction, rheumatism. The Mpongwe
make a bath for the treatment of this disease by digging a suitably
sized hole in the ground and putting into it seven herbs--whereof I know
the native names only, not the scientific--and in addition in go
cardamoms and peppers. Boiling water is then plentifully poured over
these, and the patient is laid on and covered with the parboiled green
stuff. Next a framework of twigs is placed over him, and he is hastily
clayed up to keep the steam in, only his head remaining above ground. In
this bath he is sometimes kept a few hours, sometimes a day and a half.
He is liable to give the traveller who may happen suddenly on him while
under treatment the idea that he is an atrocity; but he is not; and when
he is taken out of the bath-poultice he is rubbed and kneaded all over,
plenty more hot water being used in the process, this indeed being the
palladium of West Coast physic.
The Fjort tribe do not bury their rheumatic patients until they are dead
and all their debts paid, but they employ the vapour bath. My friend,
Mr. R. E. Dennet, who has for the past eighteen years lived amongst the
Fjort, and knows them as no other white man does, and knows also my
insatiable thirst for any form of West African information, has kindly
sent me some details of Fjort medical methods, which I give in his own
words--"The Fjort have names for many diseases; aches are generally
described as _tanta ki tanta_; they say the head suffers _Ntu tanta ki
tanta_, the chest suffers _Mtima tanta ki tanta_, and so on. Rheumatism
that keeps to the joints of the bones and cripples the sufferer is
called _Ngoyo_, while ordinary rheumatism is called _Macongo_. They
generally try to cure this disease by giving the sufferers vapour baths.
They put the leaves of the _Nvuka_ into a pot of boiling water, and
place the pot between the legs of the patient, who is made to sit up.
They then cover up the patient and the pot with coverings.
"They try to relieve the local pain by spluttering the affected part
with chalk, pepper, and logwood, and the leaves of certain plants that
have the power of blistering.
"Small-pox they try to cure by smearing the body of the patient over
with the pulped leaves of the mzeuzil. Palm oil is also used. These
patients are taken to the woods, where a hut is built for them, or not,
according to the wealth and desire of their relations. If poor they are
often allowed to die of starvation. A kind of long thin worm that creeps
about under the eyelid is called _Loyia_, and is skilfully extracted by
many of the natives by means of a needle or piece of wood cut to a sharp
point.
"Blind boils they call _Fvuma_, and they cure them by splintering over
them the pulped root _Nchechi_, mixed with red and white earth. Leprosy
they call _Boisi_, ague _Chiosi_, matter from the ear _Mafina_, rupture
_Sangafulla_. But diseases of the lungs, heart, liver, and spleen seem
to puzzle the native leeches and many natives die from these terrible
ills. Cupping and bleeding, which they do with the hollow horns of the
goat and the sharpened horn of a kid, are the remedies usually resorted
to.
"All persons are supposed to have the power to give their enemies these
different sicknesses. Amulets, frontlets, bracelets, and waistbands
charged with medicines are also used as either charms or cures.
"A woman who was stung by a scorpion went nearly mad, and, rushing into
the river, tried to drown herself. I tried my best to calm her and cure
her by the application of a few simple remedies, but she kept us awake
all night, and we had to hold her down nearly the whole time. I called
in a native surgeon to see if he could do anything, and he spluttered
some medicine over her, and, placing himself opposite to her, shouted at
her and the evil spirit that was in her. She became calmer, and the
surgeon left us. As I was afraid of a relapse, I sent the woman to be
cured in a town close by. The Princess of the town picked out the sting
of the scorpion with a needle, and gave the woman some herbs, which
acted as a strong purge, and cured her. As the Nganga bilongo
(apothecary) is busy curing the patient, he generally has a white fowl
tied to a string fastened to a peg in the ground close to him. I have
described this in _Seven Years among the Fjort_."
I think this communication of Mr. Dennett's is of much interest, and I
hastily beg to remark that, if you have not got a devoted friend to hold
you down all night, call in an apothecary in the morning time, and then
hand you over to a Princess--things that are not always handy even in
West Africa when you have been stung by a scorpion--things that, on the
other hand, are always handy in West Africa--carbonate of soda applied
promptly to the affected part will save you from wanting to drown
yourself and much other inconvenience. The sting should be extracted
regardless of the shedding of blood, carbonate of soda in hot water
washed over the place, and then a poultice faced with carbonate of soda
put on.
Although I do not say these West African doctors possess any specific
for rheumatism, it is an undoubted fact that the South-west Coast
tribes, with their poultices and vapour baths, are very successful in
treating it, more so than the true Negroes, with their clay plaster and
baking method. Rheumatism is a disease the Africans seem especially
liable to, whatever may be the local climate, whether it be that of the
reeking Niger Delta, or the dry delightful climate of Cabinda; moreover,
my friends who go whaling tell me the Bermuda negroes also suffer from
rheumatism severely, and are "a perfect cuss," wanting to come and sit
in the blood and blubber of fresh-killed whales. Small-pox is a vile
scourge to Africa. The common treatment is to smear the body of the
patient with the pulped leaves of the mzeuzil palm and with palm oil;
but I cannot say the method is successful, save in preventing pitting,
which it certainly does. The mortality from this disease, particularly
among the South-west Coast tribes, is simply appalling. But it is
extremely difficult to make the bush African realise that it is
infectious, for he regards it as a curse from a great Nature spirit,
sent in consequence of some sin, such as a man marrying within the
restricted degree, or something of that kind. Mr. Dennett mentions
small-pox patients being sent into the bush with more or less
accommodation provided. Mr. Du Chaillu gave Mr. Fraser the idea that the
Bakele tribe habitually drove their small-pox sick into the bush and
neglected them, which certainly, from my knowledge of the tribe, I must
say is not their constant habit by any means. I venture to think that
this rough attempt at isolation among the Fjort is a remnant of the
influence of the great Portuguese domination of the kingdom of Congo in
the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, when the Roman
Catholic missionaries got hold of the Fjort as no other West African has
since been got hold of. Nevertheless the keeping of the sick in huts
you will find in almost all districts in places--_i.e._ round the house
of a great doctor. My friend Miss Mary Slessor, of Okyon, has the bush
round her compound fairly studded with little temporary huts, each with
a patient in. You see, distinguished doctors everywhere are a little
uppish, and so their patients have to come to them. Such doctors are
usually specialists, noted for a cure of some particular disease, and
often patients will come to such a man from towns and villages a week's
journey or more away, and then build their little shantie near his
residence, and remain there while undergoing the cure.
There is a prevalent Coast notion that white men do not catch small-pox
from black, but I do not think this is, at any rate, completely true. I
was informed when in Loanda that during an epidemic of it amongst the
natives, every white man had had a more or less severe touch, and I have
known of cases of white men having small-pox in other West Coast places,
small-pox they must either have caught from natives or have made
themselves, which is improbable. I fancy it is a matter connected with
the vaccination state of the white, although there seem to be some
diseases prevalent among natives from which whites are immune--the Yaws,
for example.
Less terrible in its ravages than small-pox, because it is far more
limited in the number of its victims, is leprosy; still you will always
find a case or so in a district. You will find the victims outcasts from
society, not from a sense of its being an infectious disease, but
because it is confounded with another disease, held to be a curse from
an aggrieved Nature spirit. There was at Okyon when I was there a leper
who lived in a regular house of his own, not a temporary hospital hut,
but a house with a plantation. He led a lonely life, having no wife or
family or slave; he was himself a slave, but not called on for
service--it was just a lonely life. People would drop in on him and
chat, and so on, but he did not live in town. There was also another one
there, who had his own people round him, and to whom people would send
their slaves, because he was regarded as a good doctor; but he also had
his house in the bush, and not in town.
Undoubtedly the diseases that play the greatest continuous havoc with
black life in West Africa are small-pox, divers forms of pneumonia,
heart-disease, and tetanus, the latter being largely responsible for the
terrible mortality among children; but the two West African native
diseases most interesting to the European on account of their
strangeness, are the malignant melancholy and the sleep sickness, and
strangely enough both these diseases seem to have their head centre in
one region--the lower Congo. They occur elsewhere, but in this region
they are constantly present, and now and again seem to take an epidemic
form. Regarding the first-named, I am still collecting information, for
I cannot tell whether the malignant melancholy of the lower Congo is one
and the same with the hystero-hypochondria, the home-sickness of the
true Negro. In the lower Congo I was informed that this malignant
melancholy had the native name signifying throwing backwards, from its
being the habit of the afflicted to throw themselves backwards into
water when they attempted a drowning form of suicide.[24] They do not,
however, confine themselves to attempts to drown themselves only, but
are equally given to hanging, the constant thing about all their
attempts being a lack of enthusiasm about getting the thing definitely
done: the patient seems to potter at it, not much caring whether he does
successfully hang or drown himself or no, but just keeps on, as if he
could not help doing it. This has probably given rise to the native
method of treating this disease--namely, holding a meeting of the
patient's responsible relations, who point out elaborately to him the
advantages of life over death, and enquire of him his reasons for
hankering after the latter. If in spite of these representations he
persists in a course of habitual suicide, he is knocked on the head and
thrown into the river; for it is a nuisance to have a person about who
is continually hanging himself to the house ridge pole and pulling the
roof half off, or requiring a course of sensational rescues from
drowning.
The sleep disease[25] is also a strange thing. When I first arrived in
Africa in 1893 there had just been a dreadful epidemic of it in the
Kakongo and lower Congo region, and I saw a good many cases, and became
much interested in it, and have ever since been trying to gather further
information regarding it.
Dr. Patrick Manson in his important paper[26] states that it has never
been known to affect any one who has not at one time or another been
resident within this area, and observes on its distribution that "it
seems probable that as our knowledge of Africa extends, this disease
will be found endemic here and there throughout the basins of the
Senegal, the Niger, the Congo, and their affluents. We have no
information of its existence in the districts drained by the Nile and
the Zambesi, nor anywhere on the eastern side of the continent." As far
as my own knowledge goes the centres of this disease are the Senegal and
the Congo. I never saw a case in the Oil Rivers, nor could I hear of
any, though I made every inquiry; the cases I heard of from Lagos and
the Oil Rivers were among people who had been down as labourers, &c., to
the Congo. What is the reason of this I do not know, but certainly the
people of the lower Congo are much given to all kinds of diseases, far
more so than those inhabiting the dense forest regions of Congo
Francais, or the much-abused mangrove swamps of the Niger Delta.
Dr. Manson says, "The sleeping sickness has been attributed to such
things as sunstroke, beriberi, malaria, poison, peculiar foods, such as
raw bitter manioc, and diseased grain; it is evident, however, that none
of these things explains all the facts." In regard to this I may say I
have often heard it ascribed to the manioc when in Kakongo, the idea
being that when manioc was soaked in water surcharged with the poisonous
extract, it had a bad effect. Certainly in Kakongo this was frequently
the case in many districts where water was comparatively scarce. The
pools used for soaking the root in stank, and the prepared root stank,
in the peculiar way it can, something like sour paste, with a dash of
acetic acid, and thereby the villages stank and the market-places ditto,
in a way that could be of no use to any one except a person anxious to
find his homestead in the dark; but Dr. Manson's suggestion is far more
likely to be the correct one. Against it I can only urge that in some
districts where I am informed by my medical friends that _Filaria
perstans_ is very prevalent, such as Calabar, the Niger, and the Ogowe,
sleeping sickness is not prevalent. Dr. Manson says "the fact that the
disease can be acquired only in a comparatively limited area, suggests
that the cause is similarly limited; and the fact that the disease may
develop years after the endemic area has been quitted, suggests that the
cause is of such a nature that it may be carried away from the endemic
area and remain latent, as regards its disease-producing qualities for a
considerable period; even for years." He then goes on to say, "_Filaria
perstans_, so far as is known, is limited in its geographical
distribution to Western Equatorial Africa--that is to say, it can be
acquired there only--and it may continue in active life for many years
after its human host has left the country in which alone it can be
acquired. We also know that similar entozoa in their wanderings in the
tissues by accident of location, or by disease, or injury of their
organs, not infrequently give rise to grave lesions in their hosts. I
therefore suggest that possibly _Filiaria perstans_ may in some way be
responsible for the sleeping sickness. I know that this parasite is
extremely common in certain sleeping sickness districts, and moreover, I
have found it in the blood of a considerable number of cases of this
disease--in six out of ten--including that described by Mackenzie. There
are many difficulties in the way of establishing this hypothesis, but
there is a sufficient inherent probability about it to make it well
worth following up."
The most important statement that I have been able to get regarding it
so far, has been one sent me by Mr. R. E. Dennett; who says "The
sleeping sickness though prevalent throughout Kakongo and Loango is most
common in the north of Loango and the south of Kakongo, that is north of
the river Quillou and among the Mussorongo.
"What the cause of the sickness is, it is hard to say, but it is one of
those scourges which is ever with us. The natives say any one may get
it, that it is not hereditary, and only infectious in certain stages.
They avoid the _dejecta_ of affected persons, but they do not force the
native to live in the bush as they do a person affected by small-pox.
"Pains in the head chiefly just above the nose are first experienced,
and should these continue for a month or so it is to be expected that
the disease is _Madotchila_, or the first stage of the sleeping
sickness.
"In the word _Madotchila_ we have the idea of a state of being poisoned
or bewitched. At this stage the sickness is curable, but as the sick man
will never admit that he has the sickness and will suffer excruciating
pain rather than complain, and as it is criminal to suggest to the
invalid or others that he is suffering from the dreadful disease, it
often happens that it gets great hold of the afflicted and from time to
time he falls down overcome by drowsiness.
"Then he swells up and has the appearance of one suffering from dropsy,
and this stage of the disease is called _Malazi_, literally meaning
thousands (_Kulazi_ = one thousand, the verb _Koula_ to become great and
_zi_ the productive fly.)
"This appears to be the acute stage of the disease and death often
occurs within eight days from the beginning of the swelling.
"Then comes the stage _Ntolotolo_, meaning sleep or mock death.
"The next stage is called _Tchela nxela nbela_, that is the knife
cutting stage, referring to the operation of bleeding as part of the
cure; and the last stage of the disease is called _Nlemba Ngombo_.
_Lemba_ means to cease. The rites of _Lemba_ are those which refer to
the marriage of a woman who swears to die with her husband or rather to
cease to live at the same time as he does. _Ngombo_ is the name of the
native grass cloth in which, before the _Nlele_ or cotton cloth of the
white man appeared, the dead were wrapped previous to burial. Thus in
the name _Nlemba Ngombo_ we have the meaning of marriage to the deathly
winding sheet or shroud.
"I remember how poor Sanda (a favourite servant of Mr. Dennett's, a
mussorong boy) was taken sick with pains in his head which I at first
mistook for simple headache. As he was of great service to me I kept him
in the factory instead of sending him to town (the custom with invalids
in Kakongo is that they should go to their town to be doctored). I
purged him and gave him strong and continued doses of quinine and he got
better; but from time to time he suffered from recurring headache and
drowsiness, and on one occasion when I was vexed at finding him asleep
and suspecting him of dissipation, was going to punish him, I was
informed by another servant that the poor fellow was suffering from the
sleeping sickness. I at once sent him to town with sufficient goods to
pay his doctor's bill, and his relations did all in their power to have
him properly cured, taking him many miles to visit certain Ngangas famed
for the cure of this fell disease.
"He came back to me well and happy. The next year however, the malady
returned, and he went to town and gradually wasted away. They told me
that sores upon one of his arms had caused him to lose a hand, which he
lived to see buried before him. Sanda was of royal blood, so his body
was taken across from the north bank to San Antonio or Sonio, on the
south bank of the Congo, and there he was buried with his fathers.
"Another sad case was that of a woman who lived in the factory.
"As a child, it appeared afterwards, she had suffered from the disease,
and had been cured by the good French doctor then resident in Landana
(Dr. Lucan). I knew nothing of this at the time, and put her sickness
down to drink, but got a doctor to see her. He could not make out what
was the matter, but thought it might possibly be some nervous disease;
altogether we were completely puzzled.
"On one occasion during my absence she nearly tortured one of her
children to death by stabbing her with a needle. On my return, and when
I heard what she had done, I was very angry with her, and turned her out
of the factory, and shortly afterwards the poor creature died in the
swelling state of the disease.
"Joao (a more or less civilised native) tells me that one of his wives
was cured of this sleeping sickness. She was living with him in a white
man's factory when she had it, and on one occasion fell upon a demijohn
and cut her back open rather seriously--the white man cured her so far
as the wound was concerned. A native doctor, a Nganga or Kakamucka,
later on cured the sleeping sickness. He first gave her an emetic, then
each day he gave her a kind of Turkish bath; that is, having boiled
certain herbs in water, he placed her within the boiling decoction under
a covering of cloth, making her perspire freely. Towards nightfall he
poured some medicine up her nostrils and into her eyes, so that in the
morning when she awoke, her eyes and nose were full of matter; at the
same time he cupped and bled her in the locality of the pain in the
head. What the medicines were I cannot say, neither will the Nganga tell
any one save the man he means shall succeed him in his office.
"The native doctors appear to know when the disease has become incurable
and the life of the patient is merely a question of a few days, for once
while I was at Chemongoanleo, on the lower Congo I heard the village
carpenter hammering nails into planks, and asked my servant what they
were doing. 'Building Buite's coffin,' he said. 'What, is he dead?' said
I. 'No, but he must die soon,' he answered. This statement was confirmed
by the relations of Buite who came to me for rum as my share towards his
funeral expenses. Imagine my feelings when shortly after this Buite,
swollen out of all likeness to his former self, crawled along to the
shop and asked me for a gallon of rum to help him pay his doctor's bill.
"A doctor of the Congo Free State began to take an interest in the
sickness and asked me to persuade some one suffering from the disease to
come and place himself under his care, promising that he would have a
place apart made for him at the station, so that he could study the
sickness and try to cure the poor fellow. After a good deal of trouble I
got him a patient willing to remain with him, but owing to some red tape
difficulty as to the supply of food for the sick man this doctor's good
intentions came to nought. A Portuguese doctor here also gave his
serious attention to the sleeping sickness, and it was reported that he
had found a cure for it in some part of a fresh billy-goat. This good
man wanted a special hospital to be built for him and a subsidy so that
he might devote himself to the task he had undertaken. His Government,
however, although its hospitals are far in advance of those of its
neighbours on the Coast, could not see its way to erect such a place."
All I need add to this is that I was informed that the disease when it
had once definitely set in ran its fatal course in a year, but that when
it came as an epidemic it was more rapidly fatal, sometimes only a
matter of a few weeks, and it was this more acute form that was
accompanied by wild delirium. Another native informant told me when it
was bad it usually lasted only from twenty to forty days.
Monteiro says the sleep disease was unknown south of the Congo until it
suddenly attacked the town of Musserra, where he was told by the natives
as many as 200 died of it in a few months. This was in 1870, and curious
to say it did not spread to the neighbouring towns. Monteiro induced the
natives to remove from the old town and the mortality decreased till the
disease died out. "There was nothing in the old town to account for this
sudden singular epidemic. It was beautifully clean and well-built on
high dry ground, surrounded by mandioca plantations, the last place to
all appearance to expect such a curious outbreak."[27]
Monteiro also observes that "there is no cure known for it," but he is
speaking for Angola, and I think this strengthens his statement that it
is a comparatively recent importation there. For certainly there are
cures, if not known, at any rate believed in, for the sleeping sickness
in its own home Kakongo and Loango. There is a great difference in the
diseases, flora and fauna, of the north and south banks of the
Congo--whether owing to the difficulty of crossing the terrifically
rapid and powerful stream of the great river I do not know. Still there
was--more in former times than now--much intercourse between the natives
of the two banks when the Portuguese discovered the Congo in 1487. The
town called now San Antonio was the throne town of the kingdom of Kongo,
and had nominally as provinces the two districts Kakongo and Loango,
these provinces that are now the head centres of the sleep disease. Yet
in the early accounts given of Kongo by the Catholic missionaries, who
lived in Kongo among the natives, I have so far found no mention of the
sleep disease. It is impossible to believe that Merolla, for example,
could have avoided mentioning it if he had seen or heard of it.
Merolla's style of giving information was, like my own, diffuse.
Certainly we must remember that these Catholic missionaries were not
much in Loango and Kakongo as those provinces had broken almost entirely
away from the Kongo throne prior to the Portuguese arrival, so perhaps
all we can safely say is that in the 15-17th centuries there was no
sleep disease in the districts on the south bank of the Congo, and it
was not anything like so notoriously bad in the districts on the north
bank.
Before quitting the apothecary part of this affair, I may just remark
that if you, being white, of a nervous disposition, and merely in
possession of an ordinary amount of medical knowledge, find yourself
called in to doctor an African friend or acquaintance, you must be
careful about hot poultices. I should say, _never_ prescribe hot
poultices. An esteemed medical friend, since dead, told me that when he
first commenced practice in West Africa he said to a civilised native
who was looking after his brother--the patient--"Give him a linseed
poultice made like this"--demonstration--"and mind he has it hot." The
man came back shortly afterwards to say his brother had been very sick,
but was no better, though every bit of the stuff had been swallowed so
hot it had burnt his mouth. But swallowing the poultice is a minor
danger to its exhibition. Even if you yourself see it put on outside,
carefully, exactly where that poultice ought to be, the moment your back
is turned the patient feeling hot gets into the most awful draught he
can find, or into cold water, and the consequences are inflammation of
the lungs and death, and you get the credit of it. The natives
themselves you will find are very clever at doctoring in their own way,
by no means entirely depending on magic and spells; and you will also
find they have a strong predilection for blisters, cupping and bleeding,
hot water and emetics; in all their ailments and on the whole it suits
them very well. Therefore I pray you add your medical knowledge and your
special drugs to theirs and for outside applications stick to blisters
in place of hot poultices.
FOOTNOTES:
[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.