Page:West African Studies.djvu/270

 We will start with the medical student stage. Now, every West African tribe has a secret society—two, in fact, one for men and one for women. Every free man has to pass through the secret society of his tribe. If during this education the Elders of this society discover that a boy is what is called in Calabar an ebumtup—a person who can see spirits—the elders of the society advise that he should be brought up to the medical profession. Their advice is generally taken, and the boy is apprenticed as it were to a witch doctor, who requires a good fee with him. This done, he proceeds with his studies, learns the difference between the dream-soul basket and the one sisas are kept in—a mistake between the two would be on a par with mistaking oxalic acid for Epsom salts. He is then taught how to howl in a professional way, and, by watching his professor, picks up his bedside manner. If he can acquire a showy way of having imitation epileptic fits, so much the better. In fact, as a medical student, you have to learn pretty well as much there as here. You must know the dispositions, the financial position, little scandals, &c., of the inhabitants of the whole district, for these things are of undoubted use in divination and the finding of witches, and in addition you must be able skilfully to dispense charms, and know what babies say before their own mothers can. Then some day your professor and instructor dies, his own professional power eats him, or he tackles a disease-causing spirit that is one too many for him, and on you descend his paraphernalia and his practice.

It is usual for a witch doctor to acquire for his power a member of one of the higher grade spirit classes—he does not acquire a human soul—and his successor usually, I think, takes the same spirit, or, at any rate, a member of the