ZULU MEDJCINE AND MEDICINE-MEN. 4-3 



Febrile Complaints. 



Everyone who lias had to deal with sick natives will have 

 remarked with what puzzling frequency their ailment is 

 described by them as an iimKhuhlane. It is impossible to 

 express this very comprehensive term by any single expression 

 in English. It indicates almost any general constitutional 

 derangement of a febrile and generally infectious nature, 

 and may include enteric, scarlet and malarial fevers ; small- 

 pox and measles ; pneumonia, acute bronchitis and influenza, 

 as well as all the commoner minor catari'hs and bad coughs to 

 which one is periodically liable. Practically nothing is 

 understood of the nature of these important diseases, and the 

 treatment is confined to a simple alleviation of such symptoms 

 as ai^e conspicuously evident, as the eruptions, the cough, and 

 more especially the bile {iNyongo) . 



Every umKlinhlane is accompanied by an excessive secretion 

 of some kind or another, and it is this secretion, be it ex- 

 pectoration or bile, be it discharged through the mouth or 

 the rectum, that the natives universally regard as the principal 

 delinquent, responsible for the whole bodily derangement. 

 And in this view they are not without very respectable 

 company ; for the immortal Hippocrates himself held a 

 similar view, viz. that the blood, the phlegm and the bile 

 were the three primary seats of disease. His treatment, like 

 that of the natives, aimed no doubt at ridding the system 

 of whatever was abnormal in these bodily fluids. 



With the natives the bile is held to be the cause, not only 

 of the stomach and bowel disorders, but even of the chest 

 inflammations and cough. The doctor's attack is therefore 

 vigorously directed against this feature, and for the purpose 

 he uses emetics, enemas and purgatives. A common method 

 is to bruise a small handful of the roots, six inches long, of 

 both the isiNama (Achyranthes avicularis) and the 

 uMasigcolo or inKiiphnlana (Osteospermum nervatum), 

 infuse with a couple of cupfuls of warm water, drink, and 

 follow Avith sufficient simple warm water to cause vomiting. 



