978 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 130 



bandages from the foot and washing off a 

 yellow powder made from pollen and a cer- 

 tain bitter root, with which the sore had 

 been dressed. They bade me sit at the right 

 side of the man, so as to lay my hands on 

 his left breast and to occasionally breathe 

 into his face and administer to him my 

 'white medicine' (which contained an opi- 

 ate). 



Then they produced, from a buckskin 

 pouch and a roll of rags, a much shattered 

 bottom of a dark-colored glass bottle and 

 two or three broken nodules of obsidian, also 

 several neat splints of cedar and masses of 

 freshly gathered, clean yellow piiion gum, 

 as well as a carefully tied bundle of willow- 

 root bark and some of the yellow roots and 

 pollen I have before mentioned. With a 

 blunt-pointed knife, used vertically, one of 

 them detached, by tapping, a number of 

 small, thin, sharp flakes or chips from the 

 bottle-glass and obsidian. Six or eight of 

 these diminutive flakes were now selected 

 and mounted, each in the cleft end of one 

 of the cedar splints ; some so as to form 

 straight lancets, but others at right angles 

 to the splint handles. The blades of one or 

 two of these latter were wrapped round and 

 round with sinew near the point of inser- 

 tion in the splint, so that only a limited 

 portion of the edge or tip of each protruded. 

 These and the other improvised surgical 

 instruments were laid out in due order on 

 the floor. A quantity of shredded cedar- 

 bark, buckskin scrapings, and old, soft rags 

 were provided; also a large bowl of fresh 

 water, and another filled with the red 

 liquid and containing a small gourd dipper. 



Everything being in readiness, the two 

 priests closed their hands over their mouths 

 and breathed into them, as does a man on 

 a cold day, uttering, meanwhile, short invo- 

 cations, for strength of wind or breath for 

 the patient, and for power of wind or breath 

 of guidance for themselves; literally the sup- 

 plication was: "Their [The Being's] wind 



of life, by its power may his will be strength- 

 ened and he quieted be, and likewise by it 

 may our methods and good fortune straight 

 be made!" Bidding the man ' Stay himself 

 with endurance,' since ' Things must be as 

 they must, poor child,' and telling me also 

 to ' Stay him,' with my * Breath of relation- 

 ship and sympathy,' they set to work with- 

 out further delay. 



First, they bathed his foot to clear it of 

 the astringent yellow powder, and to cleanse 

 the sore in order that they might be the 

 better able to inspect it. Then, very delib- 

 erately, they diagnosed the case, frequently 

 comparing notes. It was from this diag- 

 nosis that I learned their reasons for at- 

 tempting the operation. They believed 

 that the flesh of certain muscles in the 

 foot had died or were dying from the 

 violence done them, and were therefore 

 ' wi-wi-yo-a ' (worm-becoming, worm-turn- 

 ing) in the depths of the foot. Accord- 

 ing to this theory, their plan was to make a 

 double, or inverted T-shape, incision so that 

 the integument could be lifted up from the 

 affected parts in two flaps, the ' dead flesh ' 

 removed, the ' decayed ' or ' black blood ' 

 fully extracted, the worms and the ' seed of 

 their kind ' found and utterly uprooted. 

 They thereupon mapped out with their 

 fingers the lines of the incisions they pro- 

 posed to make. One of them gently bade 

 their patient anew to ' Stay himself,' while 

 the other seized his foot with both hands and 

 turned it up, stretching the skin by pressure; 

 then the first grasped one of the obsidian 

 lancets (mounted sidewise and wrapped 

 with sinew so that the point protruded just 

 sufficiently to sever the skin) and deliber- 

 ately, but with deft and even stroke, slashed 

 down from the ankle about two and a-half 

 inches, along a line corresponding in direc- 

 tion with that of the tendon of the little 

 toe. He then quickly made another slash 

 from the instep straight down to the middle 

 of the first cut. Catching up one of the 



