Sometimes It Will Take
Off A Limb Of Its Victim At Once, But Frequently It Buries The Body
Whole For A Few Days Before Eating It.
The body is always buried if
it is left to the crocodile.
I have a most profound respect for the whole medical profession, but
I am bound to confess that the African representatives of it are a
little empirical in their methods of treatment. The African doctor
is not always a witch-doctor in the bargain, but he is usually.
Lady doctors abound. They are a bit dangerous in pharmacy, but they
do not often venture on surgery, so on the whole they are safer, for
African surgery is heroic. Dr. Nassau cited the worst case of it I
know of. A man had been accidentally shot in the chest by another
man with a gun on the Ogowe. The native doctor who was called in
made a perpendicular incision into the man's chest, extending down
to the last rib; he then cut diagonally across, and actually lifted
the wall of the chest, and groped about among the vitals for the
bullet which he successfully extracted. Patient died. No
anaesthetic was employed.
I came across a minor operation. A man had broken the ulna of the
left arm. The native doctor got a piece - a very nice piece - of
bamboo, drove it in through the muscles and integuments from the
wrist to the elbow, then encased the limb in plantain leaves, and
bound it round, tightly and neatly, needless to say with tie-tie.
The arm and hand when I saw it, some six or seven months after the
operation, was quite useless, and was withering away.
Many of their methods, however, are better. The Dualla medicos are
truly great on poultices for extracting foreign substances, such as
bits of iron cooking-pot - a very frequent form of foreign substance
in a man out here, owing to their being generally used as bullets.
Almost incredible stories are told by black and white of the
efficacy of these poultices; one case I heard from a reliable source
of a man who had been shot with fragments of iron pot in the thigh.
The white doctor extracted several pieces and said he had got all
out, but the man still went on suffering, and could not walk, so, at
his request, a native doctor was called in, and he applied his
poultice. In a few minutes he removed it, and on its face were two
pieces of jagged iron pot. Probably they had been in the poultice
when it was applied, anyhow the patient recovered rapidly.
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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 222 of 371
Words from 116362 to 116885
of 194943
