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Stirring Scenes in Savage Lands; An Account of the Manners, Customs, Habits and Recreations, Peaceful and Warlike, of the Uncivilised World
Stirring Scenes in Savage Lands An Account of the Manners Customs Habits and Recreations Peaceful and Warlike of the Uncivilised World Author:James Greenwood General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1879 Original Publisher: Ward, Lock and Co. Subjects: Primitive societies Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access ... more »to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: Polynesian War Canoe. SAVAGE M-D.'s. CHAPTER XX. Polynesian Surgeon -- Figian treatment -- A shipwrecked Figian -- Samoan Prlesto and Doctor -- Samoan physics -- Polynesian Disease-makers -- Namaquan cruelty -- Left to die -- Savage arithmetic -- Bartering for Sheep -- The Abiadiongs -- A Pawnee M. D. -- An Indian Sawbones -- A medicine dance -- An Indian vapour bath -- Cupping three Queens -- What Is expected of a Physician -- Hints to Travellers in the East -- Stimulants to be avoided in the East -- Cold water bathing in Nubia. JHE science of surgery and medicine, as practised among savages, forms not the least curious and interesting feature in the story of their lives. Since they have as a rule no belief in natural or unavoidable death, it follows that natural or unavoidable sickness, as being the agents of death, are no more faithfully entertained. Unlike us, who have a name for the thousand ills that afflict us -- from tooth-rash to elephantiasis -- the savage has but one name for all the diseases he is acquainted with, and that one name is -- the devil. Ague -- and it is the devil within the man shaking his limbs; rheumatism, myriads of tiny imps ore under the sT"" nibbling the 68 POLYNESIAN SURGEONS. wretched sufferer's bones; stonu:fih-ache, tooth-ache, head-ache -- it is the devil, and nobody and nothing else. The business of the witch-doctor, or the gree-gree man, is to eject the devil from his patient -- by fair means or foul as soon as possible. Dispersed through various preceding chapters instances of the way in...« less