706 ARTS AND CRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [ETH. ANN. 38 
sorted to in the case of fevers. Large vessels with water, into which 
glowing hot stones are thrown, are placed under the patient’s ham- 
mock, as described by Schomburgk among the Makusi (SR, 1, 428) 
and Guinau (ScF, 226). In the reverse process, likewise recorded 
by him and by Pinckard, water is thrown upon large heated stones, 
and the sick person is enveloped in the steam (Pnk, 1, 505; SR, 1, 333, 
334). The Roucouyenne women employ vapor baths after confine- 
ment (pl. 149 B). 
925. Bleeding was practiced both as a preventive and as a cure, 
some interesting examples of the former being met with in Gumilla’s 
account of the Orinoco Indians. Thus those [Guamo] who were 
drunk fell asleep covered with blood from head to foot, because when 
they felt the strong beer beginning to get the better of them they be- 
lieved it due to some other cause, and in order to avoid the evil ef- 
fects which they feared might ensue they slashed their temples and 
parts of the forehead with sharp fish teeth and pointed pieces of 
bone (G, 1, 163). Again, [during the course of the Otomac ball 
game] when the sun began to rise high in the heavens and got very 
hot, then the bloodletting also began. They had with them their 
sharpened awls, with which they scarified their thighs, legs, and arms 
in a way so savage and cruel as to make one shudder. Without ever 
taking their eyes for a moment from off the ball’as it flew to and 
fro, they scarified themselves blindly, without caring whether the 
incisions were deep or slight. The blood streamed to earth without 
their taking any more notice of it than if it were some one else’s, and 
when they considered that enough had flowed they plunged into the 
river to staunch it. But if it still flowed they filled up the wound with 
sand (G, 1, 171). On the Apaporis there has been noted a scarifier 
of fishes’ teeth fixed in a fragment of calabash for use in all conceiv- 
able diseases and for the strengthening of the muscles (KG, 11, 289). 
Bleeding may also be resorted to as a cure for weariness by the Ma- 
kusi and Wapishana (ScO, 445). Brown gives the following experi- 
ence, from the Cotinga River, near a small stream in the bed of which 
were large areas of flat sandstone rocks with hollows in them. Some 
of these hollows were filled with clotted blood, which, upon inquiry, 
he learned had been drawn from the arms and legs of the Indians. 
When Indians suffer from any pain or stiffness in the limbs, caused 
by fatigue or otherwise, they procure a sharp, flinty stone or piece of 
broken glass with which they score the affected part in long parallel 
cuts, just piercing the skin and allowing the blood to ooze out in 
little beadlike drops. By scraping down the cuts with a knife edge 
the beads of blood are removed and more blood oozes out; but on 
letting the beads remain, they coagulate and prevent any further 
