80 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 43 



MEDICINE 



Whon the natives are sick they eat no tisli and very little meat, and they even 

 deprive themselves of that if the natnre of the malady demands it. Then they 

 lake only hominy or meal cooked in meat broth. If the sick person is worse 

 they have a small quantity of coarse meal cooked in the same rich broth, and 

 give of this broth [itself] only to one who is doing well. 



As soon as a man is indisposed his wife sleeps with another woman on the bed 

 which touches that of the sick person at the foot or at the head. The husband 

 of this neighbor finds another place to lie down. In this way the wife is in a 

 position to help her husband without inconveniencing him in any manner.*^ 



Du Pratz says of the Natchez doctors : 



The charlatans (or jugglers, as the French have named them), who have been 

 seen in each nation of Canada to perform the office of priests and doctors, and 

 who, among the neighbors of the Natchez, do the work of diviners, are confined 

 among them to the functions of sucking afflicted portions of the body, after 

 having made some scarifications with a very slender fiint splinter. These 

 scarifications do not occupy so much space that they can not be sucked all 

 together.^ 



This would indicate a specialization of the medical functions un- 

 usual in America, and the statement is unsupported by the rest of our 

 authorities. Says Dumont: 



Since, as has just been seen, the savages have no religion, at least apparently, 

 and in consequence no external worship, it naturally follows that they have 

 among them no priests or priestesses. There are, however, certain men who 

 might be thought to take their place, at least they may be regarded as diviners, 

 sorcerers, or magicians, since they are in fact consulted as such, and as, 

 through ridiculous ceremonies, they pretend to accomplish things which, if they 

 were true, would surpass without difficulty all human power. 



These men, who are called alc-ris or jugglers, also mix themselves up in 

 medicine, and it must be admitted that, without science and without study, 

 without drugs, and ordinarily without any preparations, they many times cure 

 their sick as surely as the most skillful physicians could do.^ 



Dumont's statements in this place are so general that we might 

 assume there Avas a specialization of functions among the medicine 

 men of the Xatchez which had escaped him, but the same objection can 

 not be made to the descriptions in the Luxembourg memoir and by 

 Charlevoix and Le Petit, given on pages 178 to 180. 



Dumont thus describes treatment by scarification and sucking in 

 almost the same words as Du Pratz : 



The nle.ris never use lancets to draw blood, but when they liave a sick 

 person who they think needs to be bled they take a splinter of flint with which 

 they make many incisions in the flesh of the sick person in the place where he 

 feels tlie pain. After that tliey suck the blood, either with the mouth or with 

 the end of a bison horn, which they have sawed off and of which they have made 



o Du Pratz, Hist, de La Louisiane, in, 12-13. 



"Tbid., II, 383-384. 



"Dumont, McQl. Hist, sur La Louisiane, i, 169-170. 



