344 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
had his left thumb blown off by the bursting of his rifle when 
firing at a rhinoceros charging upon him, from which animal 
he then had to ride for his life. He doctored his hand roughly 
with turpentine, but everybody insisted it would have to come 
off. Kruger, however, flatly refused to lose his hand. ‘ The 
two joints of what was once my thumb had gone, but it appeared 
that it would still be necessary to remove a piece of bone. 
I took my knife intending to perform the operation, but it was 
snatched away from me. A little later I got hold of another knife, 
and cut across the ball of the thumb, removing as much as was 
necessary ; the worst bleeding was soon over, but the operation 
was a very painful one. I had no means by me of deadening the 
pain, and tried to persuade myself that the hand upon which I was 
performing this surgical operation belonged to somebody else. 
The wound healed very slowly. The women sprinkled finely- 
powdered sugar on it, and from time to time I had to remove 
the dead flesh with my pocket-knife ; but gangrene set in after 
all. Different remedies were applied, but all seemed useless, 
for the black marks rose as far as the shoulder. Then they 
killed a goat, took out the stomach, and cut it open; and I put 
my hand into it while it was still warm. This Boer remedy 
succeeded, for when it came to the turn of the second goat my 
hand was already easier, and the danger much less. The wound 
took over six months to heal, and before it was quite closed 
I was out hunting again.” Goats’ milk is found to be far less 
subject to germs than cows’ milk; it has wonderful nutritive 
properties, and will sometimes rescue infants, and invalids, as 
a last resource in diet. ‘“‘ The Indians,” says Antient Cymric 
Medicine, “are treated by their native doctors for asthma in 
a remarkable way. Ghee prepared with Goats’ milk is given 
to the patient internally, and a Goat is brought into the sick 
person’s room three times a day. The patient is directed to 
make use of the animal as a pillow, and to hug it during his 
paroxysms of difficult breathing, then inhaling the strong scent 
of the beast ; and the sick man will within a short while become 
cured of his complaint.” From the days of Moses the Goat 
has been accredited with a certain virtue as the carrier away 
of what is evil. Originally, according to the old Jewish ritual, 
on the great day of atonement the sins of the people were 
symbolically laid on the head of a Goat, which was afterwards 
turned out into the wilderness, 
