the orifice, at every inspiration, with the point of the tongue, the wax is at last pressed together with the teeth, and the little hole in it closed up, leaving a vacuum within the horn for the blood to flow from the already scarified parts.  The edges of the horn applied to the surface are wetted, and cupping is well performed, though the doctor occasionally, by separating the fibrine from the blood in a basin of water by his side, and exhibiting it, pretends that he has extracted something more than blood.  He can thus explain the rationale of the cure by his own art, and the ocular demonstration given is well appreciated.

Those doctors who have inherited their profession as an heirloom from their fathers and grandfathers generally possess some valuable knowledge, the result of long and close observation; but if a man can not say that the medical art is in his family, he may be considered a quack.  With the regular practitioners I always remained on the best terms, by refraining from appearing to doubt their skill in the presence of their patients.  Any explanation in private was thankfully received by them, and wrong treatment changed into something more reasonable with cordial good-will, if no one but the doctor and myself were present at the conversation.  English medicines were eagerly asked for and accepted by all; and we always found medical knowledge an important aid in convincing the people that we were really anxious for their welfare.  We can not accuse them of ingratitude; in fact, we shall remember the kindness of the Bakwains to us as long as we live.

The surgical knowledge of the native doctors is rather at a low ebb.  No one ever attempted to remove a tumor except by external applications.  Those with which the natives are chiefly troubled are fatty and fibrous tumors; and as they all have the ‘vis medicatrix naturae’ in remarkable activity, I safely removed an immense number.  In illustration of their want of surgical knowledge may be mentioned the case of a man who had a tumor as large as a child’s head.  This was situated on the nape of his neck, and prevented his walking straight.  He applied to his chief, and he got some famous strange doctor from the East Coast to cure him.  He and his assistants attempted to dissolve it by kindling on it a little fire made of a few small pieces of medicinal roots.  I removed it for him, and he always walked with his head much more erect than he needed to do ever afterward.  Both men and women submit to an operation without wincing, or any of that shouting which caused young students to faint in the operating theatre before the introduction of chloroform.  The women pride themselves on their ability to bear pain.  A mother will address her little 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.  When we were passing one of the deep wells in the Kalahari, a boy, the son of an aged father, had been drowned in it while playing on its brink.  When all hope was gone, the father uttered an exceedingly great and bitter cry.  It was sorrow without hope.  This was the only instance I ever met with of a man weeping in this country.