TllF MF.DICINE ^^lAN IN NATAL AND ZULULAND. 

 By the Hon'ble Mr. Justice Cecil Gower Jacksox. 



The medicine man or herbahst plays an important i)art 

 among all the Bantu tribes of South Africa. For good or ill 

 he plies his trade, secure in the conviction that his office is an 

 indispensable one, and content to follow the primitive methods 

 which his forbears for generations past have practised in the 

 treatment of disease. Little is known generally by Europeans 

 of these methods: little is known of the man himself; yet the 

 lives of many are in his keeping. By some he is credited with 

 having gradually acquired a considerable degree of cleverness 

 in his heart, and a close knowledge of many indigenous plants 

 of high medicinal value, an analysis and study of which would 

 repay otu- own doctors and chemists. On the other hand, there 

 are many who hold that he is an evil in the land ; that his treat- 

 ment for the most part is entirely experimental, and carried out 

 by methods which in themselves are sufficient to jeopardise the 

 recovery of any but the most obstinate patients. The subject 

 is not one which has been widely discussed ; probably even those 

 who have expressed divergent views as with authority would not 

 not claim to have made a deep study of the matter, but base their 

 opinions on facts which have come to their knowledge in a 

 general way. Statistics, naturally, are not available; accurate 

 information as to the number of patients which an average prac- 

 titioner may attend in the course of a year, and the result of his 

 ministrations, would be difficult if not impossible to obtain. If 

 such a return, even approximately correct could be compiled, 

 it may well be that the figures would be startling. Anyone even 

 moderately familiar with Native life and customs may soon 

 glean enotigh to satisfy himself that the cult of the medicine 

 man is one which gives unrestricted scope to experiments in the 

 medical and surgical treatment of disease and wounds, as well 

 as in midwifery, and constitutes a problem which calls for investi- 

 .gation. 



The urgency of the problem might be well exemplified by a 

 reference to concrete cases, both civil and criminal, v.'hich have 

 come before the Courts, and which alone would furnish sufficient 

 data of a reliable and convincing nature to illustrate its impor- 

 tance. A study of these judicial records would be instructive ; a 

 comprehensive gamut of human nature, from comedy to tragedy, 

 would fall within its purview, and could not fail to reveal much 

 of interest from a material and psychological standpoint. Limi- 

 tations of time and space, however, preclude an attempt to deal 

 with this phase of the subject in a hasty sketch which does not 

 aim at being other than a superficial review of the medicine man, 

 his legal status, his position in the economic life of the Native. 

 and his general method of procedure. In this connection a 

 popular fallacy that the issue of a licence to a Native doctor 



A 



