Page:Seven Years in South Africa v1.djvu/403

 is to dig up the plants that are reputed to have medicinal virtues, and for this purpose the student is taken through the woods and plains, and made familiar not only with the plants themselves, but with the parts of them that are to be employed, and with the times and seasons when they ought to be gathered. The appropriate parts of the plants having been steeped in water to form decoctions, or dried and pounded into powders, are then, by the use of certain formularies, converted into “medicines;” other formularies being repeated when the remedies are administered, an operation which must of necessity be performed by the doctor himself, and which ordinarily takes place in the presence of a noisy crowd of lookers-on.

In disorders like typhus or dysentery, sudorifics are the remedy most frequently exhibited. The patient is made to lie down in his best fur jacket, or in a warm woollen shawl bought probably for the occasion, and when the medicines have done their work, the nyaka reappears and carries off the reeking garment, in order, as he says, to bury it, sweat and all. The patient may be rejoiced at having the disorder carried so effectually out of the house, but if, when convalescent, he should happen to see the doctor’s wife parading the village in his jackal-skin, or in the comfortable shawl, he would never venture to hint at its restoration.

The latter portion of the course of study com-