ZULU MEDICINE AND MEDlOfNE-MEN. 85 



adenium arborescens) may be bi'oken up and the 

 pungency inhaled through the nostrils ; or the same may 

 be pounded along with the leaves of the isiShoshokazana 

 (Ranunculus sp.) mixed in a little water and drawn into 

 the nose. 



A snuff for headache is sometimes made from the powdered 

 bark of the umKhu-angu and the uMahdeha trees ; or the 

 roots of the uhuLihazi herb may be burned and then sniffed 

 at. Should the head-pains be the result of some old skull 

 wound [inGozi), the dark portion of the uMathunga root 

 (C y r t a n t h u s o b 1 i q u u s ) , or the roots of the inKominophondo 

 are ground and snuffed up the nose. Other plants used for 

 headache are the umEmhhesa, uKhalimele (R h y n c h o s i a s p .) , 

 inDawoluthi, uPhico, and icLefhi. 



Chest Complaints. 



The Zulu has his weak parts, and perhaps the chief of these, 

 nowadays at least, is the respiratory organs. Since the adop- 

 tion of clothing and town-life in insanitary hovels, chest com- 

 plaints have multiplied exceedingly. They come now, not in 

 the form of comparatively harmless scrofulous coughs, but in 

 the more perilous guise of pleurisy, pneumonia, bronchitis and 

 consumption, all of wJiich are answerable for many deaths 

 annually. 



Among a people so scrofulous as the Zulu, I suppose it would 

 be only reasonable to expect the presence of typical phthisis 

 even prior to the advent of the white man in the land. And 

 yet I am not aware of any absolute evidence that it was so. 

 But this is by no means equivalent to saying that pulmonary 

 complaints of a tuberculous nature were unknown. Though 

 rare, they were very well known and much dreaded, for the 

 so-called iXhwala was undoubtedly of this nature. 



The term iXhwala really indicates a kind of bovine swelling' 

 or tumour. The virus from this, the Zulu theory declares, has 

 been secretly and maliciously introduced into the system of 

 the sufferer by an umThalcathi, probably through the medium 



