Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/303

 MEDICAL TREATMENT. 225 mentioned remedy is confined to the male sex, and by them very commonly resorted to during the hot season, even when in good health. None of the blood is allowed to drop on the ground, but it is carefully made to run on another man’s body in such a manner as to form a number of thin transverse lines, representing the appearance of a regular network. The object of this custom is partly to remove disease, as inflammation and headache, partly to promote the growth of young people, and preserve the vigour of older men. The women are on no account allowed to bleed, or even to see the men when bled; and when the latter are exercising this secret privilege of theirs, the witarna is sounded to give the women and uninitiated young people notice not to approach. Independent of these empiricisms, which may be applied by anybody, the Aborigines have doctors among them called Mintapas, who pretend that they can cure disease by sucking it out of the body. If the evil be general they apply their lips to the pit of the stomach, or if local to the part affected, and after sucking a while they take out of their mouths a small piece of wood or bone, which they make the patient and bystanders believe to be the malady, sucked by them out of the body. Such is the superstition of these ignorant people that they not only firmly believe in this mummery, but also vehemently expostulate with you if you express a doubt, or hint that the mintapas have previously put the wood produced by them into their mouths. Among the tribes in the immediate vicinity of Port Lincoln the mintapas are rare, but the famous Kukata tribe, to the north-west, are said to harbour many of such workers of miracles. External wounds are generally left to heal of their own accord, the most that they do to them is to wrap something very tightly round the injured part, to press the adjoining parts occasionally, and sprinkle them with cold water if inflamed. The natives show a deal of sympathy with sick people, especially the women, who vent their feelings by a plentiful effusion of tears and vigorous manipulation of the painful parts, while the patients, even in desperate cases, display very often a degree of stoical fortitude that old Zeno himself might have envied.