[Illustration: HOW BEDOUIN MOTHERS CARRY THEIR BABIES]
In every Moslem land there are countless lives lost every year from lack of skilled assistance when it is sorely needed.... This work calls specially for women-doctors and nurses, for though Moslem women will consent to see men-doctors for many of their ailments, and will even crowd out the men-patients at dispensaries taken by male doctors, very few will allow a man to give them the assistance they need in difficult labour; were even the women themselves willing, it is very uncommon for the husbands and other male relations to consent to it. As a rule they would rather the women died than allow a man to interfere; the only comfort they give them is the assurance of the Prophet that women who die in childbirth go straight to Paradise.
[Sidenote: Superstitions regarding newborn infants.]
There is scarcely a land outside the pale of Christian civilization where the newborn infant is not surrounded by absurd, painful, or distressing ceremonies because of superstitions that may not be ignored, the “Evil Eye” that must be averted, or ceremonies that are to be observed because handed down from generation to generation. One of the most astonishing and picturesque of these observances is described by the Swiss missionary, Henri A. Junod, in his careful study of “The Life of a South African Tribe.”
The second act is the _rite of the broken pot_.... This is a medical treatment and a religious ceremony combined. It is performed by the family doctor on the threshold of the hut in the following way: He puts into this piece of broken pottery pieces of skin of all the beasts of the bush: antelopes, wild cats, elephants, hippopotami, rats, civet cats, hyenas, elands, snakes of dangerous kinds; and roasts them till they burn. The smoke then rises, and he exposes the child to it for a long time, the body, face, nose, mouth. The baby begins to cry; he sneezes, he coughs; it is just what is wanted; then the doctor takes what remains of the pieces of skin, grinds them, makes a powder, mixes it with tihuhlu grease of the year before last, and consequently hard enough to make an ointment. With this ointment he rubs the whole body of the child, especially the joints, which he extends gently in order to assist the baby’s growth.