An Ant-Eater's Hole Is Often Selected,
In Order To Save The Trouble Of Digging A Grave.
On two occasions
while I was there this hasty burial was followed by the return home
of the men, who had been buried alive, to their affrighted relatives.
They had recovered, while in their graves, from prolonged swoons.
In ophthalmia the doctors cup on the temples, and apply to the eyes
the pungent smoke of certain roots, the patient, at the same time,
taking strong draughts of it up his nostrils. We found the solution
of nitrate of silver, two or three grains to the ounce of rain-water,
answer the same end so much more effectually, that every morning
numbers of patients crowded round our house for the collyrium.
It is a good preventive of an acute attack when poured into the eyes
as soon as the pain begins, and might prove valuable for travelers.
Cupping is performed with the horn of a goat or antelope, having a little hole
pierced in the small end. In some cases a small piece of wax is attached,
and a temporary hole made through it to the horn. When the air
is well withdrawn, and kept out by touching the orifice, at every inspiration,
with the point of the tongue, the wax is at last pressed together
with the teeth, and the little hole in it closed up, leaving a vacuum
within the horn for the blood to flow from the already scarified parts.
The edges of the horn applied to the surface are wetted,
and cupping is well performed, though the doctor occasionally,
by separating the fibrine from the blood in a basin of water by his side,
and exhibiting it, pretends that he has extracted something more than blood.
He can thus explain the rationale of the cure by his own art,
and the ocular demonstration given is well appreciated.
Those doctors who have inherited their profession as an heirloom
from their fathers and grandfathers generally possess some valuable knowledge,
the result of long and close observation; but if a man can not say
that the medical art is in his family, he may be considered a quack.
With the regular practitioners I always remained on the best terms,
by refraining from appearing to doubt their skill in the presence of
their patients. Any explanation in private was thankfully received by them,
and wrong treatment changed into something more reasonable
with cordial good-will, if no one but the doctor and myself
were present at the conversation. English medicines were eagerly
asked for and accepted by all; and we always found medical knowledge
an important aid in convincing the people that we were really anxious
for their welfare. We can not accuse them of ingratitude;
in fact, we shall remember the kindness of the Bakwains to us
as long as we live.
The surgical knowledge of the native doctors is rather at a low ebb.
No one ever attempted to remove a tumor except by external applications.
Those with which the natives are chiefly troubled are
fatty and fibrous tumors; and as they all have the `vis medicatrix naturae'
in remarkable activity, I safely removed an immense number.
In illustration of their want of surgical knowledge may be mentioned
the case of a man who had a tumor as large as a child's head.
This was situated on the nape of his neck, and prevented his walking straight.
He applied to his chief, and he got some famous strange doctor
from the East Coast to cure him. He and his assistants
attempted to dissolve it by kindling on it a little fire
made of a few small pieces of medicinal roots. I removed it for him,
and he always walked with his head much more erect than he needed to do
ever afterward. Both men and women submit to an operation without wincing,
or any of that shouting which caused young students to faint
in the operating theatre before the introduction of chloroform.
The women pride themselves on their ability to bear pain. A mother will
address her little girl, from whose foot a thorn is to be extracted, with,
"Now, ma, you are a woman; a woman does not cry." A man scorns to shed tears.
When we were passing one of the deep wells in the Kalahari,
a boy, the son of an aged father, had been drowned in it
while playing on its brink. When all hope was gone, the father uttered
an exceedingly great and bitter cry. It was sorrow without hope.
This was the only instance I ever met with of a man weeping in this country.
Their ideas on obstetrics are equally unscientific, and a medical man
going near a woman at her confinement appeared to them more out of place
than a female medical student appears to us in a dissecting-room.
A case of twins, however, happening, and the ointment
of all the doctors of the town proving utterly insufficient
to effect the relief which a few seconds of English art afforded,
the prejudice vanished at once. As it would have been out of the question
for me to have entered upon this branch of the profession - as indeed
it would be inexpedient for any medical man to devote himself exclusively,
in a thinly-peopled country, to the practice of medicine -
I thereafter reserved myself for the difficult cases only,
and had the satisfaction of often conferring great benefits on poor women
in their hour of sorrow. The poor creatures are often placed in a little hut
built for the purpose, and are left without any assistance whatever,
and the numbers of umbilical herniae which are met with in consequence
is very great. The women suffer less at their confinement than is the case
in civilized countries; perhaps from their treating it, not as a disease,
but as an operation of nature, requiring no change of diet except
a feast of meat and abundance of fresh air.
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