Page:West African Studies.djvu/250

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194
AFRICAN MEDICINE
chap.

however, the malady returned, and he went to town and gradually wasted away. They told me that sores upon one of his arms had caused him to lose a hand, which he lived to see buried before him. Sanda was of royal blood, so his body was taken across from the north bank to San Antonio or Sonio, on the south bank of the Congo, and there he was buried with his fathers.

"Another sad case was that of a woman who lived in the factory.

"As a child, it appeared afterwards, she had suffered from the disease, and had been cured by the good French doctor then resident in Landana (Dr. Lucan). I knew nothing of this at the time, and put her sickness down to drink, but got a doctor to see her. He could not make out what was the matter, but thought it might possibly be some nervous disease; altogether we were completely puzzled.

"On one occasion during my absence she nearly tortured one of her children to death by stabbing her with a needle. On my return, and when I heard what she had done, I was very angry with her, and turned her out of the factory, and shortly afterwards the poor creature died in the swelling state of the disease.

"Joaõ (a more or less civilised native) tells me that one of his wives was cured of this sleeping sickness. She was living with him in a white man's factory when she had it, and on one occasion fell upon a demijohn and cut her back open rather seriously—the white man cured her so far as the wound was concerned. A native doctor, a Nganga or Kakamucka, later on cured the sleeping sickness. He first gave her an emetic, then each day he gave her a kind of Turkish bath; that is, having boiled certain herbs in water, he placed her within the boiling decoction under a covering