Chap. VI. LOW STATE OP SURGICAL KNOWLEDGE. 
131 
of medicinal roots. I removed it for liim, and he always walked 
with liis 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 wliicli caused young students to 
faint in the operating theatre before the introduction of chloro¬ 
form. The women pride themselves on their ability to bear pain. 
A mother will address her httle 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. Wlien we were 
passing one of the deep weUs iu the Kalahari, a boy, the son of 
an aged father, had been drowned in it wlule playing on its 
brink. Wlien all hope was gone, the father uttered an exceed¬ 
ingly great and bitter cry. It was sorrow without hope. This 
was the only iustance 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 ap¬ 
pears to us in a dissecting-room. A case of twins, however, hap¬ 
pening, and the ointments of all the doctors of the town proving 
utterly insufficient to effect the rehef which a few seconds of 
Enghsh art affiDrded, the prejudice vanished at once. As it would 
have been out of the question for me to have entered upon this 
branch of the profession,—as indeed it would be inexjDedient for 
any medical man to devote himself exclusively, in a thinly-peopled 
country, to the practice of medicine,—I thereafter reserved myself 
for the difficult cases only; and had the satisfaction of often con¬ 
ferring great benefits on poor women in their hour of sorrow. 
The poor creatures are often placed in a httle hut buht for the 
pmpose, and are left without any assistance whatever, and the 
numbers of umbhical herniae which are met with in consequence 
is very great. The women suffer less at their confinement than 
is the case in civhised countries; perhaps from their treating it 
not as a disease, but as an operation of nature, requiring no 
change of diet, except a feast of meat and abundance of fresh air. 
The husband on these occasions is bound to slaughter for his lady 
an ox, or goat, or sheep, according to his means. 
My knowledge in the above hue procmed for me great 
fame in a department in which I could lay no claim to merit. 
K 2 
