Page:The Pima Indians.pdf/273

268 Cook, supplied the Pimas with vaccine. They retained some of their old dread of the demon and continued to place the bandages with which the arm had been dressed upon a certain mesquite tree, not daring to burn them for fear of offending. Smallpox has usually been brought to the Pimas by the Papagos from Mexico. Measles appears every three or four years, but does not seem to he any more fatal than among the whites, though it is more likely to be followed by consumption.

Rheumatism of the chronic articular type is fairly common and is treated like many other pains by scarifying the part affected with bits of broken glass.

There are a few cases of acquired syphilis among the Pimas and a few due to hereditary taint, but they are fairly free from the disease, considering their habits, and are much more exempt from it than their allies, the Maricopas.

Diarrhea was supposed to be die to touching ripe wheat in the fields, and it was considered necessary for a medicine-man to walk about in the standing grain and blow the danger away with smoke.

Bleeding wounds were bandaged; burns were plastered with wet mud; broken limbs were set with skill and inclosed in light and strong splints made of reeds.

Melancholia sometimes afflicts "a man who has killed Apaches" so that he wanders about without clothing and refuses to talk. No treatment is attempted, and the victim dies of neglect.

Massage is a common form of treatment of almost any disease and of itself is enough to endanger the patient, for it sometimes happens that the operator administers a vigorous pommeling to the abdomen.