DRINKS, NARCOTICS, AND MEDICINES 77 



and Coyote canon are still considerably used. The Coahuillas call the 

 temescal hash-lish. They build the house above ground. Two crotched 

 posts are set up about ten feet apart, a ridgepole added and then logs 

 are leaned about it from all sides so as to form an elliptical hut, with a 

 low door on one side. Brush and soil are firmly compacted all over 

 the sides so as to inclose tightly the room. Into this the Indian, when 

 afflicted with cold, grip, fever, or like complaint, and frequently when 

 no illness is felt at all, enters, and building a fire in the center of the 

 hut squats for an hour or two in the heat and smoke. The result is 

 great perspiration. This is followed by a cold plunge or bath in 

 adjacent pool or stream. 



56. The Indians of California appear to have had a knowledge of 

 medicine and remedial treatment far in advance of most tribes of 

 North America. Many of their practices show a considerable under- 

 standing of the nature of the complaints they were designed to relieve 

 and were unquestionably beneficial. 



An interesting review of this system of native therapeutics has been 

 made by Dr. Cephas Bard, 1 in which many customs cited in Bancroft's 

 Native Races are verified out of the writer's rich personal experience in 

 the practice of medicine among both Indians and Mexicans, for many 

 years in this state. 



Powers also, in his Indians of California, gives good-sized lists of 

 plants utilized for medicines. 



The patient quest for food, the minute examination of every grow- 

 ing thing to disclose a possibly useful property therein, has discovered 

 to the Coahuillas a number of remedial herbs. These are put into 

 use as often as any complaint which they are known to relieve appears, 

 and I have known some of them to be tried by white men with reputed 

 benefit. 



Perhaps the largest number of these remedies are purgatives or 

 laxatives. These qualities in certain plants would be likely to be soon 

 discovered by the investigator, and there is a certain necessity for the 

 use of these principles, as several of the staples of food, like the mes- 

 quite bean, appear to produce constipation. The Adenostoma Sparsi- 

 fotium,Torr., the greasewood or chamiso, so abundant on the hillsides of 

 southern California and a really handsome tree or shrub, with yellowish 

 green or reddish bark and fragrant flowers, has been already noticed 

 as furnishing food in its seeds and as of great use in building and for 

 fuel. The twigs of this sankat, as the Coahuillas call it, are dried and 



1 Contribution to the History of Medicine in Southern California. Ventura, 1894. 



