Baths accompanied by massage are much esteemed. The baths are
sometimes of hot water with a few herbs thrown in, sometimes they
are made by digging a hole in the earth and putting into it a
quantity of herbs, and bruised cardamoms, and peppers. Boiling
water is then plentifully poured over these and the patient is
placed in the bath and is covered over with the parboiled green
stuff; a coating of clay is then placed over all, leaving just the
head sticking out. The patient remains in this bath for a period of
a few hours, up to a day and a half, and when taken out is well
rubbed and kneaded. This form of bath I saw used by the M'pongwe
and Igalwas, and it is undoubtedly good for many diseases, notably
for that curse of the Coast, rheumatism, which afflicts black and
white alike. Rubbing and kneading and hot baths are, I think, the
best native remedies, and the plaster of grains-of-paradise pounded
up, and mixed with clay, and applied to the forehead as a remedy for
malarial headache, or brow ague, is often very useful, but apart
from these, I have never seen, in any of these herbal remedies, any
trace of a really valuable drug.
The Calabar natives are notably behindhand in their medical methods,
depending more on ju-ju than the Bantus. In a case of rheumatism,
for example, instead of ordering the hot bath, the local
practitioner will "woka" his patient and extract from the painful
part, even when it has not been wounded, pieces of iron pot,
millipedes, etc., and, in cases of dysentery, bundles of shred-up
palm-leaves. These things, he asserts, have been by witchcraft
inserted into the patient. His conduct can hardly be regarded as
professional; and moreover as he goes on to diagnose who has witched
these things into the patient's anatomy, it is highly dangerous to
the patient's friends, relations, and neighbours into the bargain.
With no intentional slur on the medical profession, after this
discussion on their methods I will pass on to the question of dying.
Dying in West Africa particularly in the Niger Delta, is made very
unpleasant for the native by his friends and relations.
When a person is insensible, violent means are taken to recall the
spirit to the body. Pepper is forced up the nose and into the eyes.
The mouth is propped open with a stick. The shredded fibres of the
outside of the oil-nut are set alight and held under the nose and
the whole crowd of friends and relations with whom the stifling hot
hut is tightly packed yell the dying man's name at the top of their
voices, in a way that makes them hoarse for days, just as if they
were calling to a person lost in the bush or to a person struggling
and being torn or lured away from them. "Hi, hi, don't you hear?
come back, come back. See here. This is your place," etc.
This custom holds good among both Negroes and Bantus; but the
funeral ceremonies vary immensely, in fact with every tribe, and
form a subject the details of which I will reserve for a separate
work on Fetish.
Among the Okyon tribes especial care is taken in the case of a woman
dying and leaving a child over six months old. The underlying idea
is that the spirit of the mother is sure to come back and fetch the
child, and in order to pacify her and prevent the child dying, it is
brought in and held just in front of the dead body of the mother and
then gradually carried away behind her where she cannot see it, and
the person holding the child makes it cry out and says, "See, your
child is here, you are going to have it with you all right." Then
the child is hastily smuggled out of the hut, while a bunch of
plantains is put in with the body of the woman and bound up with the
funeral binding clothes.
Very young children they do not attempt to keep, but throw them away
in the bush alive, as all children are thrown who have not arrived
in this world in the way considered orthodox, or who cut their teeth
in an improper way. Twins are killed among all the Niger Delta
tribes, and in districts out of English control the mother is killed
too, except in Omon, where the sanctuary is.
There twin mothers and their children are exiled to an island in the
Cross River. They have to remain on the island and if any man goes
across and marries one of them he has to remain on the island too.
This twin-killing is a widely diffused custom among the Negro
tribes.
There is always a sense of there being something uncanny regarding
twins in West Africa, and in those tribes where they are not killed
they are regarded as requiring great care to prevent them from dying
on their own account. I remember once among the Tschwi {324} trying
to amuse a sickly child with an image which was near it and which I
thought was its doll. The child regarded me with its great
melancholy eyes pityingly, as much as to say, "A pretty fool YOU are
making of yourself," and so I was, for I found out that the image
was not a doll at all but an image of the child's dead twin which
was being kept near it as a habitation for the deceased twin's soul,
so that it might not have to wander about, and, feeling lonely, call
its companion after it.
The terror with which twins are regarded in the Niger Delta is
exceedingly strange and real.
