There are numbers of other medicines in use among the natives, but I have always been obliged to regret want of time to ascertain which were useful and which of no value.  We find a medicine in use by a tribe in one part of the country, and the same plant employed by a tribe a thousand miles distant.  This surely must arise from some inherent virtue in the plant.  The Boers under Potgeiter visited Delgoa Bay for the first time about ten years ago, in order to secure a port on the east coast for their republic.  They had come from a part of the interior where the disease called croup occasionally prevails.  There was no appearance of the disease among them at the period of their visit, but the Portuguese inhabitants of that bay found that they had left it among them, and several adults were cut off by a form of the complaint called ‘Laryngismus stridulus’, the disease of which the great Washington died.  Similar cases have occurred in the South Sea Islands.  Ships have left diseases from which no one on board was suffering at the time of their visit.  Many of the inhabitants here were cut down, usually in three days from their first attack, until a native doctor adopted the plan of scratching the root of the tongue freely with a certain root, and giving a piece of it to be chewed.  The cure may have been effected by the scarification only, but the Portuguese have the strongest faith in the virtues of the root, and always keep some of it within reach.

There are also other plants which the natives use in the treatment of fever, and some of them produce ‘diaphoresis’ in a short space of time.  It is certain that we have got the knowledge of the most potent febrifuge in our pharmacopoeia from the natives of another country.  We have no cure for cholera and some other diseases.  It might be worth the investigation of those who visit Africa to try and find other remedies in a somewhat similar way to that in which we found the quinine.*

* I add the native names of a few of their remedies in order to assist the inquirer:  Mupanda panda:  this is used in fever for producing perspiration; the leaves are named Chirussa; the roots dye red, and are very astringent.  Goho or Go-o:  this is the ordeal medicine; it is both purgative and emetic.  Mutuva or Mutumbue:  this plant contains so much oil that it serves as lights in Londa; it is an emollient drink for the cure of coughs, and the pounded leaves answer as soap to wash the head.  Nyamucu ucu has a curious softening effect on old dry grain.  Mussakasi is believed to remove the effects of the Go- o.  Mudama is a stringent vermifuge.  Mapubuza dyes a red color.  Musikizi yields an oil.  Shinkondo:  a virulent poison; the Maravi use it in their ordeal, and it is very fatal.  Kanunka utare is said to expel serpents and rats by its pungent smell, which is not at all disagreeable to man; this is probably a kind of ‘Zanthoxylon’, perhaps the Z. melancantha of Western Africa, as it is used to expel rats and