NATIVE TREATMENT. 155 



small-pox, with this only difference, that the 

 learned author used a more elegant instrument, 

 a golden needle ! and even in the present day 

 the same practice is approved of by the best 

 writers on the subject. The new method of 

 treatment was attended with happier results 

 than the old, only one out of six dying of the 

 malady ; and if, continues Dr. Mair, instead 

 of entirely relinquishing the cold-hath, it had 

 still been employed with judicious caution, the 

 mortality might have been further reduced. 



The kradjee, priest, soothsayer, or physician, 

 (for he appears to exercise the functions of each,) 

 goes through many superstitious ceremonies 

 to cure his patient, with rods of two or three 

 yards in length, which he fixes in the earth 

 in a crescentic form, and addresses with a 

 variety of gestures. The common people place 

 implicit faith in his predictions ; and it is 

 asserted by Clark, that they sometimes bury 

 alive those whom in his medical capacity he 

 has abandoned. They believe the disease to 

 be infectious, but do not shun one another 

 on that account; they name it " Boulol." 

 The Lachlan and Wellington Valley tribes call 

 it Thunna, thunna ; and Dr. Mair also says 

 that he heard a most lugubrious dirge chaunted 

 at a Corrobera at Bathurst, commemorative of 



