320 The Aborigines of Brazil. 



and is used by women in labour to render childbirth easier. 

 The pounded fangs of the rattle-snake are ordered for un- 

 healthy ulcers ; a live rattle-snake has its head and tail cut 

 off, and is then boiled down with a young fowl, long enough 

 to make the whole of the consistence of a jelly. This mess 

 drunk off at once is supposed to heal chronic eruptions and 

 syphilis. Large ants, we have already said, are eaten pre- 

 served in Mandiocca flour ; they are also considered to be good 

 stimulants in weakness of digestion. The dried and powder- 

 ed stomach of the crocodile is used for gravel ; the small stones 

 sometimes found in the intestines of that animal are used for 

 several diseases, and the powder of dried fish-bone, for stran- 

 gury. They stuff into carious teeth calcined tiger claws to 

 cure the pain. The pounded rattle of the rattle-snake 

 when introduced into hollow teeth, is said to make them drop 

 out. Bezoars are often brought down from the mountains of 

 Peru to the plains of the Amazon, and are in high repute in 

 stomach complaints. They ascribe great efficacy in dis- 

 cussing swellings and improving the unhealthy granulations 

 of wounds, to various animal fats. This is not only the case 

 with the fat of the crocodile, but also with that of ounces, 

 deer, cattle and fowls. They apply it directly over the part, 

 either unmixed, or rubbed up with various kinds of charcoal 

 or with herbs. The fat of the ounce is applied for the espe- 

 cial purpose of destroying worms in unclean wounds. In 

 sciatica they apply the freshly stripped skin of dogs over the 

 part. 



Articles from the Mineral kingdom. 

 Few minerals are used by the Indian in medicine. The 

 Amazon-stone, or Lapis Nephriticus, (whose country is still 

 a riddle, like the history of various pieces of stone, which 

 shaped and polished with more or less skill are common over 

 the whole of South America) is worn as an amulet : but the 

 Indians, whom I questioned, knew nothing of its use in 

 diseases of the kidneys, sciatica, gout, and rheumatism, in 



