Is It Not Possible That The Story
In The "Cloud Of Witnesses" Of A Man, During The Time Of Persecution
In Scotland, Putting His Child To His Own Breast, And Finding,
To The Astonishment Of The Whole Country, That Milk Followed The Act,
May Have Been Literally True?
It was regarded and is quoted as a miracle;
but the feelings of the father toward the child of
A murdered mother
must have been as nearly as possible analogous to the maternal feeling;
and, as anatomists declare the structure of both male and female breasts
to be identical, there is nothing physically impossible in the alleged result.
The illustrious Baron Humboldt quotes an instance of the male breast
yielding milk; and, though I am not conscious of being over-credulous,
the strange instances I have examined in the opposite sex make me believe
that there is no error in that philosopher's statement.
The Boers know from experience that adult captives may as well be left alone,
for escape is so easy in a wild country that no fugitive-slave-law
can come into operation; they therefore adopt the system of seizing only
the youngest children, in order that these may forget their parents and remain
in perpetual bondage. I have seen mere infants in their houses repeatedly.
This fact was formerly denied; and the only thing which was wanting
to make the previous denial of the practice of slavery and slave-hunting
by the Transvaal Boers no longer necessary was the declaration
of their independence.
In conversation with some of my friends here I learned that Maleke,
a chief of the Bakwains, who formerly lived on the hill Litubaruba,
had been killed by the bite of a mad dog. My curiosity was strongly excited
by this statement, as rabies is so rare in this country.
I never heard of another case, and could not satisfy myself
that even this was real hydrophobia. While I was at Mabotsa,
some dogs became affected by a disease which led them to run about
in an incoherent state; but I doubt whether it was any thing
but an affection of the brain. No individual or animal got the complaint
by inoculation from the animals' teeth; and from all that I could hear,
the prevailing idea of hydrophobia not existing within the tropics
seems to be quite correct.
The diseases known among the Bakwains are remarkably few.
There is no consumption nor scrofula, and insanity and hydrocephalus are rare.
Cancer and cholera are quite unknown. Small-pox and measles passed
through the country about twenty years ago, and committed great ravages;
but, though the former has since broken out on the coast repeatedly,
neither disease has since traveled inland. For small-pox,
the natives employed, in some parts, inoculation in the forehead
with some animal deposit; in other parts, they employed
the matter of the small-pox itself; and in one village they seem
to have selected a virulent case for the matter used in the operation,
for nearly all the village was swept off by the disease
in a malignant confluent form. Where the idea came from I can not conceive.
It was practiced by the Bakwains at a time when they had no intercourse,
direct or indirect, with the southern missionaries. They all adopt readily
the use of vaccine virus when it is brought within their reach.
A certain loathsome disease, which decimates the North American Indians,
and threatens extirpation to the South Sea Islanders,
dies out in the interior of Africa without the aid of medicine;
and the Bangwaketse, who brought it from the west coast,
lost it when they came into their own land southwest of Kolobeng.
It seems incapable of permanence in any form in persons of pure African blood
any where in the centre of the country. In persons of mixed blood
it is otherwise; and the virulence of the secondary symptoms seemed to be,
in all the cases that came under my care, in exact proportion
to the greater or less amount of European blood in the patient.
Among the Corannas and Griquas of mixed breed it produces the same ravages
as in Europe; among half-blood Portuguese it is equally frightful
in its inroads on the system; but in the pure Negro of the central parts
it is quite incapable of permanence. Among the Barotse
I found a disease called manassah, which closely resembles
that of the `foeda mulier' of history.
Equally unknown is stone in the bladder and gravel. I never met with a case,
though the waters are often so strongly impregnated with sulphate of lime
that kettles quickly become incrusted internally with the salt;
and some of my patients, who were troubled with indigestion, believed that
their stomachs had got into the same condition. This freedom from calculi
would appear to be remarkable in the negro race, even in the United States;
for seldom indeed have the most famed lithotomists there
ever operated on a negro.
The diseases most prevalent are the following: pneumonia,
produced by sudden changes of temperature, and other inflammations,
as of the bowels, stomach, and pleura; rheumatism; disease of the heart -
but these become rare as the people adopt the European dress -
various forms of indigestion and ophthalmia; hooping-cough comes frequently;
and every year the period preceding the rains is marked
by some sort of epidemic. Sometimes it is general ophthalmia,
resembling closely the Egyptian. In another year it is a kind of diarrhoea,
which nothing will cure until there is a fall of rain, and any thing
acts as a charm after that. One year the epidemic period was marked
by a disease which looked like pneumonia, but had the peculiar symptom
strongly developed of great pain in the seventh cervical process.
Many persons died of it, after being in a comatose state
for many hours or days before their decease. No inspection of the body
being ever allowed by these people, and the place of sepulture
being carefully concealed, I had to rest satisfied with conjecture.
Frequently the Bakwains buried their dead in the huts where they died,
for fear lest the witches (Baloi) should disinter their friends,
and use some part of the body in their fiendish arts.
Scarcely is the breath out of the body when the unfortunate patient
is hurried away to be buried.
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