The superstitious natives of the Lower Congo have a singular custom, when anybody dies, of compelling some victim or other to drink a poison made from the bark of the _Erythrophlœum guineensis_. It usually acts as a powerful emetic, and is administered in the hope that it may “bring up” the devil. Their medicine-man is called _nganga_, and he is taught a language quite different from the ordinary tongue, and this is kept secret from females. “No one,” says Mr. H. H. Johnston (“On the Races of the Congo”),[72] “has yet been able to examine into their sacred tongue.” The use of Latin by civilized doctors is not unlike this African custom.
The mountaineers of the Neilgherries endeavour to induce the demon they invoke to enter into the body of the “medium,” a dancer who pretends to the intoxication of prophecy. If they can persuade the demon of pestilence or typhoid fever to enter into the medium, it becomes possible to act upon and influence him.[73]
The people of Tartary make a great puppet when fever is prevalent, which they call the Demon of Intermittent Fevers, and which when completed they set up in the tent of the patients.
Mr. Forbes, in his account of the tribes of the island of Timor, says that the natives believe all diseases to be the result of sorcery, and they carry a variety of herbs and charms to avert its influence. He says: “I had as a servant an old man, who one morning complained of being in a very discomposed and generally uncomfortable state, and of being afraid he was going to die. He had seen, he said, the spirit of his mother in the night, she had been present by him and had spoken with him. He feared, therefore, that he was about to die. He begged of me some tobacco and rice to offer to her, which I gave him. He retired a little way to a great stone in the ground, and laying on it some betel and pinang, with a small quantity of chalk, along with a little tobacco and rice, he repeated for some eight or ten minutes an invocation which I did not understand. The rice and the chalk he left on the stone, which were very shortly after devoured by my fowls; the tobacco, betel, and pinang he took away again, to be utilised by himself.”[74]
When the medicine-man of these tribes calls to see a patient, he looks very closely at him, to endeavour to perceive the sorcerer who is making him ill. Then he returns to his home and makes up some medicines, which the happy patient has not however to swallow, but the drugs having been packed by the doctor into a bundle with a small stone, are thrown away as far as possible from the sick man; the stone finds out the sorcerer and returns to the doctor, who gives it to his patient and tells him it will cure him if he will wear it about his neck. This affords another illustration of the universal belief of the value of amulets in medicine.