Chap. VI. LOW STATE OF SUEGICAL KNOWLEDGE. 131 



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

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

 afterwards. Both men and women submit to an operation without 

 wincing, or any of that shouting winch 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 wliile 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 

 medical man going near a woman at her confinement appeared 

 to them more out of place than a female medical student ap- 

 pears to us in a dissecting-room. A case of twins, however, hap- 

 pening, and the ointments of all the doctors of the town proving 

 utterly insufficient to effect the relief winch 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 difficult cases only ; and had the satisfaction of often con- 

 ferring 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 hernise which are met with in consequence 

 is very great. The women suffer less at their confinement than 

 is the case in civilised 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 liis lady 

 an ox, or goat, or sheep, according to his means. 



My knowledge in the above, line procured for me great 

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



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