Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/487

Rh times, especially at night. In cases of difficult labour his rattling and singing are freely heard.

Newly-born children are washed in tepid water. Formerly, the "medicine-men" rubbed them with fine ashes. The latter custom was once widely disseminated. It is not unknown to the Zunis and Rio Grande Pueblos, and was in vogue among the Mayas of Southern Mexico.

The knowledge of the medical properties of the herbs, roots, and flowers of his own mountains, the Izzé-nantan possesses to a greater extent than is generally supposed, and he has some acquaintance with human and animal anatomy. When a bone is broken he can make a serviceable splint of willow twigs: he has good ideas of the time and manner of administering diaphoretics, enemas, and emetics, and, in cases of no consequence, effects cures without much delay, aided always by the fine constitutions of his patients. Generally, simple ailments are cured, or alleviated, by exposure to the heat and moisture of the Ta-a-chi or Surat Lodge.

In diseases of a graver type he falls back upon his powers as an exorcist. With drum and rattle and song, he seeks to drive away from the sick man the bad Chídin who has seized upon him. Localities of pain are early ascertained and attacked by the doctor, who sucks with such severity as to raise blisters. These may often, by counter-irritation, induce a cure; but if they do not, the next thing to be done by the "medicine-man" is to spit out little frogs, stones, thorns, or anything else the credulity of the sick man and his friends may accept as the cause of disease.

Among other instances may be mentioned Sequonya, chief of the Hualpuis, who was stricken down with spinal paralysis. His back was sucked and blistered in half-a-dozen places, just below the short ribs, and worms, stones,