Page:West African Studies.djvu/260

 such an accident would be a grave blow to his practice, for people would not care to call in a man who was liable to have this occur. However, our present medical man having got the sisa out, he has still to deal with the question of its disposal before he can do anything more. The assistant blows a new dream soul into the patient, and his women see to him; but the witch doctor just holds on to the sisa like a bulldog.

Sometimes the disposal of the sisa has been decided on prior to its extraction. If the patient's family are sufficiently well off, they agree to pay the doctor enough to enable him to teach the sisa the way to Hades. Indeed, this is the course respectable medical men always insist on although it is expensive to the patient's family. But there are, I regret to say, a good many unprincipled witch doctors about who will undertake a case cheap.

They will carry off with them the extracted sisa for a small fee, then shortly afterwards a baby in the village goes off in tetanic convulsions. No one takes much notice of that, because it's a way babies have. Soon another baby is born in the same family—polygamy being prevalent, the event may occur after a short interval—well, after giving the usual anxiety and expense, that baby goes off in convulsions. Suspicion is aroused. Presently yet another baby appears in the family, keeps all right for a week may be, and then also goes off in convulsions. Suspicions are confirmed. The worm—the father, I mean—turns, and he takes the body of that third baby and smashes one of its leg bones before it is thrown away into the bush; for he knows he has got a wanderer soul—namely, a sisa, which some unprincipled practitioner has sent into his family. He just breaks the leg so as to warn the soul he is