493 
striking still is their treatment of the tombs of foes who have 
fallen near their village, on which as much care is sometimes bestowed 
as on those of their own warriors. 
The prevalent diseases depend on want of cleanliness, on local 
conditions, and on epidemics. Like most hill-tribes they are infested 
with parasites. The eczemas and ringworms which result they treat by 
bathing in hot springs, which they often travel many miles to visit. 
Fever and dysentery are not uncommon; mainly in the cold weather, 
and owing to chills. At this season they say they cannot sleep at night 
but sit huddled round their fires till sunrise. When the stones outside 
their houses are warmed by the sun, they sleep on these till the mists shut 
out his rays. If caught in the jungle by the winter rainstorms they 
sometimes succumb to exposure; those who have goitre appear to die 
more readily. Goitre is comparatively infrequent in those villages whose 
watersupply filters primarily through the tertiary formations, but is more 
common in villages where the water used drains entirely from metamor- 
phic rocks. Epidemics of chicken-pox and measles sometimes prevail, but 
are counted trifling. Should however small-pox or cholera break out in 
a village the news rapidly spreads and no one from the infected village 
is permitted to enter another. The clans not yet affected compel those 
in which cases have occurred to leave the village at once. The families 
so driven out spread themselves abroad among their fields. When a 
certain time has elapsed and no new case has appeared the clan may 
return. If the disease appears in a new clan that also disperses, and in 
bad epidemics the whole village goes to the fields. The neighouring 
villages maintain a quarantine against the infected community, sometimes 
as long as a year and a half, and enforce it as rigorously in the case of 
an epidemic among cattle as when men are affected. Beyond genna the 
Angami know of no remedy nor will they submit to any. They are particu¬ 
larly averse to vaccination, although some of the neighbouring tribes submit 
to it readily. When an epidemic is thoroughly established and several 
deaths have occurred the men of the village go in a body to the jungle and 
liberate there a living fowl. The disease it is hoped will be committed to 
the bird and so conveyed away from the community. A severe form of 
ulcer known to the natives of the plains as “Naga sore” frequently occurs. 
When a case appears in a village others are certain to result; slight 
injuries, such as abrasions or pricks of skin in the jungle, developing into 
similar open angry rodent sores. As they have no treatment the patient 
23 
