98 
toner's address. 
same methods employed in other complaints, no 
doubt occasioned many deaths. 
Dysentery and diarrhoea are mentioned by a num- 
ber of authors as existing among the northern and 
western tribes. Father Charlevoix, Loskiel, and Dr. 
Pitcher state that these diseases were both treated by 
a decoction of the root of the low blackberry, the juice 
from the cedar-tree, etc. 
Paralysis is mentioned by Brickell, Lawson, Pitcher, 
Carver, and Charlevoix, who allude to it as a rare dis- 
ease. The latter mentions the fact of an Indian suf- 
fering from epilepsy being cured by a bolus adminis- 
tered by an Indian woman, but has not informed us of 
what the bolus was composed. Lewis and Clarke, in 
their journal of an expedition to the Pacific, mention 
the frequency of sore eyes among the Indian tribes of 
the plains. Brickell, in alluding to skin-diseases, states 
that they are readily cured by plants collected by the 
Indians, and that scald-head was invariably cured by 
the application of an oil made from acorns. 
The testimony is almost universal that Indian 
women suffered but slightly in childbirth. The little 
aid rendered them was generally by females. Lawson, 
however, in his history of North Carolina, states that 
no disadvantage was suffered for want of '^midwives, 
for these, as well as doctors, are well skilled in the 
practice and render labor less difficult." His language 
gives the impression that males as well as females 
rendered service in these cases.* 
A singular proceeding, in a difficult and protracted 
labor, calculated to bring on partial suffocation in the 
■^Schoolcraft, vol. I, p. 225 ; 2, p. 65. 
