Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/302

 224 THE PORT LINCOLN TRIBE. are killed at their birth as of the female sex. In extenuation of this horrible practice the women allege that they cannot suckle and carry two babies at once, while the men wash their hands in innocence by maintaining that they are never present at these murders, and that the women alone are to blame. Although both sexes are very fond of their living offspring, yet the mothers are very careless, often allowing their children to burn themselves so badly that there are few adults who have not a. more or less disfiguring mark about them received during infancy. The Aborigines have a simple method of naming their children, derived from the successive number of births by each mother. For instance: the first-born child, if a male, is named Piri; if a female, Kartanya. The second, if a boy, Warri; if a girl Warruyu, and so on to the number of six or seven names for either sex. Besides these names, which are confined to more familiar use, corresponding exactly with our Christian names, each child receives the name of the place where it was born. Both these names are retained through life, but in addition to them the males receive a third name about the age of puberty, with a great many mysterious and ceremonious observances, a description of which will be given further on. MEDICAL TREATMENT. Although living in a healthy climate and on wholesome food, yet the natives are not entirely free from diseases; those they are most subject to, besides wounds, are colds, diarrhoea, and headaches. They employ various external means with a view either of removing the disease or of affording temporal relief from pain, some of which seem appropriate enough. The principal of them are pressing or manipulating the patient’s body, especially the abdomen, and even gently treading it with the feet; drawing the belt round the waist, and the bandage round the head, very tight; sprinkling with cold water in cases of fever or local inflammation; fomenting the anus with the previously heated green leaves of the currant tree, in cases of diarrhoea; bleeding on the lower arm for the relief of severe headache. The last