SURGICAI, KNOWLEDGE. 1 19 



cordial good will, if no one but the doctor and myself 

 were present at the conversation. English medicines were 

 eagerly asked for and accepted by all ; and we always 

 found medical knowledge an important aid in convincing 

 the people that we were really anxious for their welfare. 

 We cannot accuse them of ingratitude ; in fact, we shall 

 remember the kindness of the Bakwains to us as long 

 as we live. 



The surgical knowledge of the native doctors is rather 

 at a low ebb. No one ever attempted to remove a tumour 

 except by external applications. Those with which the 

 natives are chiefly troubled are fatty and fibrous tumours ; 

 and as they all have the vis wiedicatrix natures in remark- 

 able activity, I safely removed an immense number. In 

 illustration of their want of surgical knowledge may be 

 mentioned the case of a man who had a tumour as large 

 as a child's head. This was situated on the nape of his 

 neck, and prevented his walking straight. He applied 

 to his chief, and he got some famous strange doctor from 

 the east coast to cure him. He and his assistants at- 

 tempted to dissolve it by kindling on it a little fire made 

 of a few small pieces 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 which caused young students to 

 faint in the operating theatre before the introduction of 

 chloroform. 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 exceedingly 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 appears to us in a dissecting-room. A case of 

 twins, however, happening, and the ointments of all the 

 doctors of the town proving utterly insufficient to effect 



