The Aborigines of Brazil. 335 



by the Brazilian colonist, and Hornitos on the Orinoco) this 

 place is usually the sick room. 



The Examination of the Sick. 

 Before however the patient is withdrawn from the light, he 

 undergoes a very narrow ocular scrutiny on the part of the 

 careful Paje, which extends to every portion of his body, and 

 includes touching and feeling. When the pulse is examined, 

 it is felt at the temporal artery. The oral examination is, as 

 might be expected from the natural silence of the Indian, 

 very monosyllabic. In conducting it, the Paje repeats very 

 often certain words, which, if I have not mistaken their 

 meaning, refer chiefly to the exciting causes. I have never 

 observed the examination extend to the excretions of the 

 patient. On these occasions the Indian always complains 

 of pain in the heart \ even if there be only something the 

 matter with his extremities, he repeats this complaint with 

 a most pitiful expression of face. The doctor however is 

 not led astray by it, although he certainly speaks but few 

 words of comfort. He constantly asks whether the patient 

 has an appetite for food, and if the reply be affirmative he 

 counts it a bad sign. But the examination extends to the 

 whole family : with a tedious indifference, which among us 

 would drive the relations half- mad, he asks a number of the 

 most common questions, such as where the members of the 

 family had been on a certain day, what they had said or 

 done, whom they had met, &c. All the while he maintains 

 an earnest countenance of concern, and shakes his rattle 

 from time to time. It is made of a hollowed-out gourd 

 or calabash with a stalk, adorned with various birds 5 feathers, 

 claws of animals, &c, and half filled with small pebbles. 

 This instrument is of as much importance to the Paje, as the 

 large gold-headed cane used to be among us in the hands of 

 a consequential member of the faculty. Besides being a sym- 

 bol of his excellence, it is also the vehicle of his magic powers. 

 The Paje sets it on the ground, after he has whirled it round 



