THE WESTERN COUNTRY 287 



covery of specifics and more successful in applying 

 them than nations which by their united efforts and 

 assembled experiments have not yet learned how to 

 work wonders? Or why are we to believe that the 

 American soil is more beneficent than the rest of the 

 earth in the bringing forth of specific means? The 

 Indian lives truer to nature, if living wild and un- 

 constrained may be so called. His way of life subjects 

 him to a number of miseries ; he suffers alternately 

 the extremes of hunger and fullness, cold and heat, 

 activity and relaxation, all which must work in his 

 body powerful and mischievous changes. Is he ex- 

 posed to fewer diseases merely because he has less 

 knowledge and skill in the treatment of them? Civ- 

 ilized nations live softer and more meticulously, and 

 bring upon themselves a greater number of maladies. 

 But also are they not able to remove or alleviate a 

 greater number of maladies, and to prolong the lives 

 of weaklings, who elsewhere perish? But however 

 true these things are, and however grounded the 

 charge that the Indians jealously keep secret their 

 specific and wonder-working remedies, the burden of 

 accusation is in some measure lessened by their gen- 

 erous readiness to produce without reward their mani- 

 fold roots, barks, and herbs for the behoof of those 

 needing aid, even if they do not indicate whence they 

 got them. They show at least no selfish and mer- 

 cenary views, which are the commonest motives among 

 the no less numerous mystery-usurers of more civilized 

 and enlightened nations. A speaking example of this 

 has been just now afforded in Pensylvania and adja- 

 cent parts by a certain Martin, who boasted of possess- 

 ing an all-powerful but secret cure for cancer. This 



