Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/83

 Collectanea. 71

in the camp [Irene] is a cripple, whose sole qualification is that he was an attendant on one of the Boer ambulances. He parades a great red cross on his sleeve and another on his hat " (p. 334).

In another report from the Burgher Camp at Irene, Dr. G. S. Woodroffe states that the method among the Boers when a patient's temperature is high is to put all the blankets on to the bed in the hottest part of the day. The idea is that a patient with a high temperature must be kept so ; further, medicine of one sort or another must be given every hour. On two occasions Mr. Wood- roffe found young children asleep with pin-point pupils, suffering with bronchitis. The medicine prescribed by him had not been given. In one of these cases the mother had given the child ten drops of essence of paregoric every half-hour, the child being six months old. The child died. He adds, " No one can imagine the difificulty a medical man has in preventing these people using their dangerous, useless, and disgusting remedies., Goat's dung and wormwood made into a decoction and drunk in quantities is the favourite ' drippel ' or ' middel ' for bringing out the measles. Pieces of raw meat are bandaged over each eye in acute con- junctivitis, and most of these cases are caused by dirt. Babies' ears are receptacles for an endless variety of rubbish, and conse- quently otorrhoea is very common. Rags wetted with human urine are used for open flesh-wounds, and so on. The patients and their relations need watching. Food, especially in typhoid cases where the patient is hungry, is brought in by the mothers ; or a mother may watch her child, and the nurse as well, and as soon as the nurse leaves the ward for a minute or two she may return and find child and mother gone. This actually happened here," (p. 240).

Dried peaches and bags of Boer biscuits were constantly being given to the patients in hospital at Middelburg Camp, which would have caused certain death if eaten in the invalids' then condition.

Dr. Henderson, reporting on the camp at Pietersburg, says he found it an article of faith with the Boers that water applied to a patient, unless as a drink, is absolutely fatal, and especially in the form of a poultice. " Each and every one had their own par- ticular treatment, and from the filthy decoction of goat droppings in oil and all ordinary Dutch remedies, as well as a liberal supply from our own ' apotheek,' all had a turn. In dieting, comforts supplied in the shape of brandy, port wine, milk, soup, &c., were