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Rh to hold the eye down whilst, looking through the magnifying-glass, I tried to remove the particle with the fine point of a knife. The first attempt failed but did no damage, and on the second trial I got the point of the knife under the particle and it came away. By the next morning the inflammation had very considerably subsided, the sight of the uninjured eye appeared to be almost normal, and that of the injured eye had to some extent recovered. The man was very grateful, and said he was unhappy at having no money to pay me, but that he had strong arms and would stay with me until he had worked off his debt. As I learnt that he had a wife and family dependent on him, I told him to rest during the glare of the day, and then make the best of his way home during the evening and in the early morning, and I have no doubt that he spread my fame abroad on the journey.

A few days later another interesting case came under treatment. I had noticed an anaemic-looking man accompanied by a woman loitering about the village in the morning, and later in the day saw the same man in earnest conversation with Gorgonio at the ruins; but as he did not come to speak to me, and as I knew he did not belong to Copan, I took him to be a traveller whose curiosity had prompted him to leave the road to see what we were doing at the ruins. However, when I returned to the village in the evening the same couple were still hanging about, and Gorgonio came with a mystified air to my hut and said: "Don Alfredo, it isn't true is it, that a man can have an animal inside him eating him up?" I expressed my doubts as to its probability, when he said: "That is what I have been telling the man who has been about here all day, but he says that he is quite certain that he has an animal inside him eating him up, and that a brujo (witch) put it there, and he knows who the brujo is, and he wants to ask you whether he should kill the brujo, and if he does so whether the animal will go away?" This was my first case of "brujeria," and the medical notes in 'Hints to Travellers' did not give any directions as to treatment, so I sent for the victim of witchcraft and got him to state the case himself. He was rather shy about it, but finally told me what I had already heard from Gorgonio, and I learnt further that the "brujo" was one of his neighbours living in the same village. Then I tried my best, with Gorgonio's assistance, to persuade the man that he was mistaken, that no brujo could possibly put an animal inside him to eat him up, that no doubt he was out of health, but that "brujeria" had nothing to do with it. We might just as well have talked to one of the stone monuments in the plaza with the hope of making an impression on it; both the man and his wife were fully convinced that their probably harmless neighbour was the cause and origin of the mischief,