CHAPTER XVIII.
INDIAN MEDICINE.
The following is a part of an address which the author read at a meeting of the Bristol District Medical Society.
Among the thousand popular delusions upon the subject of medicine, the belief in Indian skill is by no means the least. It has come to be almost universally understood that the American Indians, previous to their intercourse with the whites, possessed a knowledge of sovereign remedies for all diseases; that these specifics, when employed either as prophylactics, or curatives, always had the desired effect; and it has been supposed that to this cause they owed their vigor—their exemption from a large share of the diseases found in civilized and refined communities—their freedom from the decrepitude of age, and their longevity. The force of this popular error seems to increase as the Indian and his
