Chap. VI. DISEASES. 85 



or Ra (father). Mrs. Livingstone, after the birth of our eldest 

 boy Robert, was always addressed as Ma-Robert, 



T have examined several cases in which a grandmothe: 

 suckled a grandchild. Sina, of Kuruman, married when -h«.- 

 was seventeen or eighteen, and had twins ; Masina, ber 

 mother, after an interval of fifteen years since she Buckled a 

 child, applied one of them to her shrivelled breast, the milk 

 flowed, and she was able to nurse the infant entirely. She 

 was at this time at least forty years old. I have witnessed 

 several other analogous cases. Is it not possible that the 

 story in the ' Cloud of Witnesses,' of a man yielding milk 

 when he put his child to his breast during the persecution in 

 Scotland may have been literally true ? As anatomists declare 

 the structure of male and female breasts to be identical, there 

 is nothing impossible in the alleged result. Indeed Baron 

 Humboldt quotes an instance where the male gave forth milk. 



In conversation with some of my friends I learned that 

 Maleke, a chief of the Bakwains, had died from the bite of a 

 mad dog. I never heard of another case, and could not sati-fy 

 myself that this was real hydrophobia. While I was at 

 Mabotsa some dogs were affected by a disorder which led them 

 to run about in an incoherent state ; but I doubt whether it 

 was anything but an affection of the brain. Xo animal took 

 the complaint by inoculation from their teeth ; and the pre- 

 vailing idea that hydrophobia does not exist within the tropics 

 appears to be correct. 



The diseases of the Bakwains are few. There is no con- 

 sumption or scrofula, and insanity and hydrocephalus are rare. 

 Cancer and cholera are quite unknown. Small-pox and 

 measles passed through the country about twenty years ago 

 and committed great ravages ; but though the former has since 

 repeatedly broken out on the coast, neither malady has again 

 travelled inland. Inoculation for the small-pox was common. 

 In one village they seem to have selected the matter from a 

 virulent case, for nearly all the inhabitants were swept off by 

 the scourge in its malignant confluent form. In other parts the 

 natives inoculated the forehead with some animal deposit. 

 Where the Bakwains got the idea I cannot conceive. When 

 they adopted the practice tney had no intercourse whatever 

 frith the southern missionaries. They readily make use o 

 the vaccine virus when it is brought within their reach. (16) 



H 



