LOW STATE OF SURGICAL KNOWLEDGE. 145 



of medicinal roots. I removed it for him, and he always walked 

 with his head much more erect than he needed to do ever 

 afterward. Both men and women submit to an operation without 

 wincing, or any of that shouting which caused young students to 

 faint in the operating theatre before the introduction of chloro- 

 form. The women pride themselves on their ability to bear pain. 

 A mother will address her little girl, from whose foot a thorn is 

 to be extracted, with, " Now, ma, you are a woman ; a woman 

 does not cry." A man scorns to shed tears. When we were 

 passing one of the deep wells in the Kalahari, a boy, the son of 

 an aged father, had been drowned in it while playing on its 

 brink. When all hope was gone, the father uttered an exceed- 

 ingly great and bitter cry. It was sorrow without hope. This 

 was the only instance I ever met with of a man weeping in this 

 country. 



Their ideas on obstetrics are equally unscientific, and a med- 

 ical man going near a woman at her confinement appeared to 

 them more out of place than a female medical student appears to 

 us in a dissecting-room. A case of twins, however, happening, 

 and the ointment of all the doctors of the town proving utterly 

 insufficient to effect the relief which a few seconds of English art 

 afforded, the prejudice vanished at once. As it would have been 

 out of the question for me to have entered upon this branch of 

 the profession — as indeed it would be inexpedient for any medical 

 man to devote himself exclusively, in a thinly-peopled country, to 

 the practice of medicine — I thereafter reserved myself for the dif- 

 ficult cases only, and had the satisfaction of often conferring 

 great benefits on poor women in their hour of sorrow. The poor 

 creatures are often placed in a little hut built for the purpose, 

 and are left without any assistance whatever, and the numbers of 

 umbilical hernias which are met with in consequence is very great. 

 The women suffer less at their confinement than is the case in 

 civilized countries ; perhaps from their treating it, not as a disease, 

 but as an operation of nature, requiring no change of diet except 

 a feast of meat and abundance of fresh air. The husband on 

 these occasions is bound to slaughter for his lady an ox, or goat, 

 or sheep, according to his means. 



My knowledge in the above line procured for me great 

 fame in a department in which I could lay no claim to merit. 



K 



