1875.1 ^^'^ [Gabb. 



believe in them. Some of the more intelligent or more civilized of the 

 Indians, those v?ho have been most in contact with foreigners, take for- 

 eign medicines when sick, but they are the exceptions. Their method of 

 purifying an unclean person has already been described under the heads 

 of child-birth and uacleanness. They also claim to bring or drive away 

 I'ain. To do this, the doctor must have a pipe full of tobacco, or a cigar. 

 He goes into the open air, smokes, blows the smoke in certain directions, 

 calling out in an imperative tone of voice, "Rain, go to — " whatever 

 place he may see fit to designate. Once when prisoners between two 

 swollen rivers, forced to wait for them to fall low enough for us to ford ; 

 one of our few means of amusement was to give one of these fellows, in 

 our suite, a pipe full of tobacco, and set him to clearing up the weather. 

 He would go outside of our little hut, and between the puifs of smoke 

 would call out, "Rain, go to Panama," "go to Chiriqui," "go to Car- 

 tago," in short, to every remote place of which he happened to know the 

 name. It took him ten days before his efforts were crowned with success, 

 and when ultimately the blue patches did begin to appear in the sky, he 

 had the effrontery to calmly claim it as his doing ! They also claim to 

 "blow" a proposed route of travel, so as to drive away snakes and bring 

 good luck on the route. In this case, the modus operandi is practically 

 the same as for the weather. But their master efforts are when charming 

 away sickness. To see the process, two of my companions feigned sick- 

 ness and called in the services of one the doctors. He caused each one 

 to procure a live chicken. Catching the animal by the neck and heels he 

 made passes all over the body of the patient, in every direction. Any 

 sm^ll animal will answer. Sloths, opossums, even young alligators are 

 used, and are said to be equally efficacious. 



After some minutes of this manipulation, he lighted a pipe and blew 

 tobacco-smoke at them. Having given them numerous injunctions about 

 diet, such as forbidding the use of coifee, tobacco, pepper, and salt for a 

 day or two, he went outside the house, and spent half the night seated 

 under an orange tree, singing a doleful ditty, enlivened at irregular 

 periods by unearthly howls and groans. His fee for all this was, in addi- 

 tion to the two fowls, used in the ceremony, and which was all he would 

 have received from an Indian, sixty cents from one and forty from the 

 other ; the fees being graduated by the gravity of the supposed infirmi- 

 ties. These doctors claim that their powers are based on the magic 

 merits of certain charms they carry about with them. These charms are 

 supposed to be calculi, extracted from the viscera of animals. Our friend, 

 who tried to change the weather, possessed three of these. One pur- 

 ported to be from the liverof asloth, anotherfromthebladder of some other 

 auimal, &c. I examined them with a glass, and am convinced that they 

 were mere fragments of little calcareous veins, common in the metamor- 

 phic rocks of the country, and which had been ground smooth by friction. 

 My little knowledge of medicine, and a moderately well-supplied medi- 

 cine-case, enabled me to make numerous cures, and of course I soon 



