788 BUREAU OP AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



him go to bed, saying, it should not be long before he came again, which the 

 patient performed as he had ordered ; and the potion he had administered made 

 him sweat after the most violent manner that could be, whereby he smelled 

 very offensively both to himself, and they that were about him; but in the 

 evening, towards night. Jack came, with a great rattle snake in his hand 

 alive, which frightened the people almost out of their senses; and he told his 

 patient that he must take that to bed with him; at which the man was in a 

 great consternation, and told the Indian he was resolved to let no snake come 

 into his bed, for he might as well die of the distemper he had, as be killed 

 with the bite of that serpent. To which the Indian replied, he could not 

 bite him now nor do him any harm, for he had taken out his poison teeth, and 

 shewed him that they were gone. At last, with much persuasion, he admitted 

 the snake's company, which the Indian put about his middle, and ordered no 

 body to take him away on any account, which was strictly observed, although 

 the snake girded him as hard for a great while, as if he had been drawn in 

 by a belt which one pulled at with all his strength. At last the snake's twitches 

 grew weaker and weaker, till, by degrees, he felt him not; and opening the 

 bed he was found dead, and the man thought himself better. The Indian 

 came in the morning, and seeing the snake dead, told the man that his dis- 

 temper was dead along with that snake, which proved so as he said, for the 

 man speedily recovered his health and became perfectly well. 



They cure the spleen, which they are much addicted to, by burning with a reed. 

 They lay the patient on his back, so put a hollow cane into the fire, where they 

 burn the end thereof till it is very hot, and on fire at the end : Then they lay a piece 

 of thin leather on the patient's belly, between the pit of the stomach and the 

 navel, so press the hot reed on the leather, which burns the patient so that you 

 may ever after see the impression of the reed where it was laid on, which mark 

 never goes off so long as he lives. This is used for the belly-ach sometimes .... 

 They make use of no minerals in their physic, and not much of animals; but 

 chiefly rely on vegetables. They have several remedies for the tooth-ache, which 

 often drive away the pain ; but if they fail, they have recourse to punching out the 

 tooth with a small cane set against the same on a bit of leather. Then they strike 

 the reed and so drive out the tooth ; and howsoever it may seem to the Europeans, 

 I prefer it before the common way of drawing teeth by those instruments that 

 endanger the jaw, and a flux of blood often follows which this method of punch 

 never is attended withal : neither is it half the pain. The spontaneous plants of 

 America the savages are well acquainted withal, and a flux of blood never follows 

 any of their operations. They are wholly strangers to amputation, and for what 

 natural issues of blood happen immoderately, they are not to seek for a certain 

 and speedy cure. Tears, rozins, and gums, I have not discovered that they make 

 much use of; and as for purging and emetics, so much in fashion with us, they 

 never apply themselves to, unless in drinking vast quantities of their yaupon or 

 tea, and vomiting it up again as clear as they drink it. This is a custom amongst 

 all those that can procure that plant, in which manner they take it every other 

 morning or oftener, by which method they keep their stomachs clean without 

 pricking the coats, and straining nature, as every purge is an enemy to. Besides 

 the great diuretic quality of their tea carries off a great deal that perhaps might 

 prejudice their health by agues and fevers, which all watery countries are ad- 

 dicted to ; for which reason I believe it is that the Indians are not so much ad- 

 dicted to that distemper as we are, they preventing its seizing upon them by 

 this plant alone. Moreover, I have remarked, that it is only those places border- 

 ing on the ocean and great rivers, that this distemper is frequent in, and only on 

 and near the same places this evergreen is to be found, and none up towards the 



