Sure cccle in a Black Man. <,.■> 
i 
As polygamy is lawful and cudomary among the Bambaras 
as well as among all the other nations about the river Senegal 
and Gambia, and as the riches and confequence of a man are 
edimated by the number of wives that he keeps, the chiefs of 
the people have always a . great number of them. I have been 
told, that the Batcherees of Galam have their victuals mod im- 
moderately feafoned with Cayenne pepper ; and 1 know mvfelf, 
that the opulent people of the Mandinga nation make the fame 
abufe of it. This may, perhaps, be done with a view to its ope- 
rating as a provocative ; for it has a peculiar effect on the- 
feminal veflels, and will produce erections, attended with a dull 
pain and turgefcency in the tedicles : I was therefore inclined to 
think, that the immoderate ufe.of this pepper might partly be 
the caul'e of this difeafe ; but then again this could not be the 
cafe in the man I faw at Senegal, where none, or at lead very 
little of it, is ufed. 
The mod probable caufe of it feems to be an hereditary dif- 
pofition ; for, as it only begins to (hew. itfelf about the age of 
twenty-five or thirty, a man may be father of a great many 
children before it takes place, and as it feems to be confined to 
families of the principal people of the Bambara nation, it may 
be, that the man I faw afflicted with it at Senegal was de- 
feended from fuch a family, and made a dave in his younger 
years by fome fatal accident or other, as is often the cafe in 
thofe countries. . 
The French, who are the prefent podeflors of the river 
Senegal, may perhaps be able to give (hortly a more perfect 
account of this remarkable endemial difeafe. In the mean 
time, if this fhould be deemed worthy the notice of the Royal 
Society, it will afford the greated fatisfa&ion to him, who has 
the honour to be, &c. 
