62 THE ABORIGINES OF PORTO RICO [eth. ANN. 23 



caused this ilistemper; gee how I have taken it out of your body; for your Cemi had 

 put it into you because you did not pray to him, or build him some temple, or give 

 him some of your goods. If it be a stone, he says, keep it safe. Sometimes they 

 take it for certain that those stones are good and help women in labor; wherefore 

 they keep them very carefully, wrapped up in cotton, putting them into little 

 baskets, giving them .«uch as they have themselves to eat, and the same they do to 

 ■ the Cemies they have in their houses. Upon any solemn day, when they provide 

 much to eat, whether fish, flesh, or any other thing, they put it all into the house 

 of the Cemies, that the idol' may feed on it. The next day they carry all home after 

 the Cemi has eaten. And so God help them, as the Cemi eats of that, or any other 

 thing, they being inanimate stocks or stones. 



HeiTera (Dec. i, hook iii, chap. 4, page 69) gives a condensed account 

 of the procedure of these aboriginal doctor.s in curing disease: 



When any leading man is sick he calls a medicine man, who is obliged to observe 

 the same dietary as the patient. The doctor is accustomed to purge himself with an 

 herb that he takes in his nose imtil he believes himself inspired, in which crindition 

 he says many things, giving the sick to understand that he is talking with an idol. 

 Then the Indians are accustomed to anoint their faces with oil and to jnirge the sick, 

 all standing by in silence. 



The doctor first makes two circuits about the patient and pulling him by the legs 

 goes to the door of the house, which he shuts, saying: "Return to the mountain or 

 whither you wish; blow and join hands and tremble, and close the mouth." 

 Breathing on his hands, he then sucks the neck, the shoulders, and stomach, and 

 other parts of the body of the sick man, coughing and making grimaces and spitting 

 into his hands something which he had placed in his mouth, .saying to the sick man 

 that he had taken from the body that which was bad; his zemi had given him it 

 because he had not obeyed him. The objects which the doctors take from their 

 mouths were for the m'ost part stones, for which they have much devotion for use in 

 childbirth or for other things, and they preserve them as relics. 



This method of procedure, with unessential variations, might he par- 

 alleled in accounts of almost all the American Indians, the theory 

 heing that some sorcerer has afflicted the sick b}' shooting into him an 

 object with magic power, and that the doctor, having located it in the 

 body by direction of his tutelary god, removes it by his magic power 

 {2emi) and that of the god. 



The same author (Pane) makes an interesting statement regarding the 

 fate of the doctor in case of the death of his patient. Should the sick 

 person die, the doctor not having him.self properly observed the pre- 

 scribed diet, the Indians, in order to discover whether the death was due 

 to the hitter's negligence, gathered the juice of a certain herb and opened 

 a l)lood vessel of the dead per.son; then, cutting off the hair about the 

 forehead of the deceased, they made a powder from it and, liaving 

 mixed with it the juice of the herb, they presented the mi.xture to the 

 mouth of the corp.se, for it to drink, then to its nose, asking many 

 times whether the doctor had observed the proper course of treatment, 

 until the demon replied as clearly as if the patient were alive that the 

 doctor had not done so. Thereupon the corpse was returned to the 

 grave. Then the relatives of the deceased seized the doctor and gave 



