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.
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