ZULU MEDICINE AND MEDICINE-MEN. 15 



believe that the Zulu race was singularly long-lived, and free 

 from disease, but endemic and epidemic fevers, especially 

 malaria and dysentery, were periodically prevalent, and 

 demanded a heavy toll at every outbreak, owing to the 

 intimate social habits of the natives. These it was that he 

 regarded as pre-eminently the natural diseases, not caused by 

 human malice or magic ; and he grouped them all indiscri- 

 minately together under the one generic name uinKhnhlane. 

 Whether typhus and typhoid existed is problematical, as even 

 now, among the country Kafirs, they are seldom, if ever, met 

 with. Constitutional and organic diseases — consumption, 

 rheumatism, kidney, bladder and uterine complaints — were 

 all there prior to the advent of the European ; but they wei-e 

 markedly rarer than with us, and on account of this rarity 

 were unnamed and only hazily recognised, and were attri- 

 buted, not to natural causes, but solely to malicious and 

 magical origin. Leprosy and the venereal diseases were 

 absolutely unknown, and so were probably also scarlatina 

 and whooping-cough, while smallpox, from the absence of 

 pock-marked faces, must have been extremely uncommon,^ 

 notwithstanding that pock-marked features are quite remark- 

 ably numerous among the neighbouring Tonga tribes to the 

 northward — tribes for several centuries in close contact with 

 Arabs ancjl Portuguese. 



Under the altered conditions of the present day, when the 

 native is removed from the open air of the veld into the 

 vitiated atmosphere and congested dwellings of European 

 towns, this immunity from disease bids fair to cease. 



The black races would appear to be unusually susceptible 

 to new diseases, though hardened enough to the old. Yet at 

 the same time they possess a larger share than we of animal 

 vitality and recuperative energy. But whether these innate 

 powers of resistance will prove stronger than the enemy 

 attacking them remains for longer experience to show. 



' The epidemic of small-pox during Mpande's reign was regarded liy 

 tlie natives as quite an unprecedented event. 



