Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

FARTHEST, BUT SHUT, IN 179
bottles of physic : " There is no more death." The old
Napoleonic phrase, " As false as a bulletin," becomes quite
the common idea at Mushidi's Court. *' Eternal health "
is his dream—but remember the average eternity of a
negro lasts only six weeks. A most nerve-racking ordeal
any such " treatment " ever is, because the native " witch-
doctors " are usually attacked for failure, and frictions
abound. A favourite method of disposing of a nasty
drug is the common African device of taking the dose, not
in person, but by proxy, the real sick man believing that
if even his cousin drinks it for him, then the healing
virtue will be the same. Have they not the same blood ?
Or smoke your medicine in a pipe, as one patient of
mine did. Busy with something else, and mindful of the
dictum that the whole art of medicine consists in judicious
poisoning, I gave the lady three tabloids, leaving her to
dispose of them in the easy and elementary mode of such
a pampered form of dispensing. Swallow them ? Not
she, my lady. Meeting her an hour afterwards, the
only answer this negro sister gave was by pointing
silently to the huge gourd pipe she was then smoking.
Nor could I remotely guess what the solemn-faced
sacrifice meant by this pointing in such a scared way to
her pipe, until my eye caught the poor tabloids roasting
in the bowl like coffee-beans. She cannot conceive how
decisive is a doctor's dose, but in a kindly way approves
all she can. Put the clinical thermometer in her mouth
for a few seconds, and she sucks it solemnly for healing
virtue. Remove now the said instrument and wave her
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