14 HUGO RIED'S ACCOUNT OF THE INDIANS 



touch was sufficient to produce the desired effect; and 

 that some were iustantaueous, and that others required 

 one, two, or even twelve months before action took effect. 



Rheumatism comprised nearly all the general com- 

 plaints. Syphilis 11 was unknown. Toothache seldom 

 troubled them. Rheumatism was treated by applying 

 a string of blisters, each the size of a dime, to the affected 

 part. The fur off the dry stalks of nettles was used for 

 blistering; this was rolled up, compressed, and applied 

 with saliva; then fire was applied, when it burned like 

 punk; as one was extinguished, another was lit. For 

 lumbago, they drank of a sweating herb and lay down for 

 twenty or thirty hours in hot ashes. Fever was treated 

 by giving a large bolus of wild tobacco mixed with lime 

 (of shells), causing vomiting, besides other herbs and 

 manipulations of the Seer. 



Local inflammation was scarified with pieces of sharp 

 flint and procuring as much blood as possible from the part. 

 Paralysis, stagnation of the blood, etc., was treated by 

 whipping the part or limb, with bunches of nettles for an 

 hour or two, likewise drinking the juice of thorn apple 

 which caused ebriety for two or three days. Decline (of 

 rare occurrence) was treated by giving the cooked meat 

 of the mud turtle for a period of time. 



Shell lime was well known, but none made from lime- 

 stone. For an emetic, it was mixed with wild tobacco 

 and taken immediately in bolus, but in a more agreeable 

 form it was pounded up and formed into a cake, and used 

 in fragments as required. 



Strangury was treated by sweating, as in the lying-in 

 woman, only marsh mallows were employed instead of 

 tansy ; then a large bolus of chewed tobacco produced 

 general laxation and prostration which often produced 

 relief at once. If this failed, drawing blood by sucking 



