ZULU MEDICINK AND MEDICINE-MEN. 11 



There are baked insects and dried reptiles; the dung of 

 lions in powders and the fat of the water-sprite in bottles ; 

 the shrivelled flesh of the white man and the hardened menses 

 of the baboon ; an incongruous assortment of oddities — 

 Spanish-fly powder, asbestos, glass prisms, washing-soda, flint, 

 spa, crystal, coral, rare geological specimens of every descrip- 

 tion ; skins and bones of every conceivable animal, and 

 hundreds of barks, roots, berries and leaves — in a word, 

 choice selections innumerable and wonderful, medicinal and 

 magical, useful, harmful, and inert, from the whole range of 

 mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, terrestrial and 

 marine. 



There are amaKhnhalo, to be eaten for self -fortification 

 against evil ; and itniKhan(h), to be set for destroying the 

 power in others. There are imBliultlo, to be laid on the 

 enemy's, path, that, in passing, a fatal disease may befall him ; 

 and iziuTelezi, for sprinkling about the kraal to ward off 

 the lightning or discomfit the umThahatJvi in his impious 

 endeavours; izimPundu, for confusing him when in the act, 

 and iziuGqunda, for "taking the edge off" the act when 

 accomplished. 



There are imiTht ettmyama, " black medicines," so called 

 from their colour or the colour of their decoction, generally 

 drastic in their nature, and, from their potency, the first to 

 be administered to the patient for the energetic expulsion of 

 the evil afflicting him. 



There are imiTlii evihlojiJtf, "white medicines," also so 

 called from their colour, to be administered subsequently to 

 the black, as a kind of tonic or sedative, to work off the 

 effects of the latter and to restore the patient once more to a 

 state of complete healthfuliiess. 



And there are amaKJiamhhi, "green medicines" — herbs 

 and roots freshly culled from the veld— the largest and most 

 useful class of all. 



I have actually registered, in the pages of my Zulu-English 

 Dictionary, some 777 different plants, and in the case of 225 

 of these (apart from the charms) some medicinal use or 



