FIRST LADY DOCTORS 



could comfortably digest. The life of a savage meant 

 tremendous meals, followed by days of starvation ; even 

 now, when young children are fed on rice in India, a thread 

 is tied round their waist, and, when this bursts, they are not 

 allowed to eat any more. 



Very probably some of these early physicians were lady 

 doctors usually of a certain age. Men were too busy with 

 their hunting and warfare to have time to try experiments 

 with drugs, to make concoctions of herbs all more or less 

 disquieting and to find out if these were of any use. 



So that such medicine-men or witches gradually came to 

 understand enough about poisons or fruits to make them- 

 selves respected and even feared. They would, no doubt, 

 make botanical excursions in the forest, accompanied by 

 their pupils, in order to point out the poisonous and useful 

 drugs. 



It is worth noting, in passing, that this habit of botanical 

 professors going on excursions with medical students has 

 persisted down to our own times, probably without any 

 break in the continuity. 



But it was soon found advisable to make this knowledge 

 secret and difficult to get. They did not really know so very 

 much, and a mysterious, solemn manner and a quantity of 

 horrible and unusual objects placed about the hut^ would 

 perhaps prevent some irate and impatient savage patient 

 from throwing a spear at his wizard — or witch-doctor. 



Shakespeare alludes to this in Macbeth. "Scale of 

 Dragon ; tooth of wolf ; witches' mummy ; maw and gulf 



^ This is still the custom in the huts of the wizard or medicine-man in 

 West Africa, where one finds small cushions stuck over with all sorts 

 of poisonous plants, bits of human bones, and other loathsome acces- 

 sories. 



a8 



