mes juices from the bush were tried; at
other times the patient drank on at water until it was rejected; and,
on some occasions, mud, and even the most unmentionable filth, was
mixed up and taken as an emetic draught. Latterly, as their
intercourse with Tongans, Fijians, Tahitians, and Sandwich Islanders
increased, they made additions to their _pharmacopoeia_ of juices from
the bush. Each disease had its particular physician. Shampooing and
anointing the affected part of the body with scented oil by the native
doctors was common; and to this charms were frequently added,
consisting of some flowers from the bush done up in a piece of native
cloth and put in a conspicuous place in the thatch over the patient.

The advocates of _kinnesipathy_ would be interested in finding, were
they to visit the South Seas, that most of their friction, percussion,
and other manipulations, were in vogue there ages ago, and are still
practised. Now, however, European medicines are eagerly sought after;
so much so, that every missionary is obliged to have a dispensary, and
to set apart a certain hour every day to give advice and medicine to
the sick.

As the Samoans supposed disease to be occasioned by the wrath of some
particular deity, their principal desire, in any difficult case, was
not for medicine, but to ascertain the cause of the calamity. The
friends of the sick went to the high priest of the village. He was
sure to assign some cause; and, whatever that was, they were all
anxiety to have it removed, as the means of restoration. If he said
they were to give up a canoe to the god, it was given up. If a piece
of land was asked, it was passed over at once. Or, if he did not wish
anything particular from the party, he would probably tell them to
assemble the family, "confess, and throw out." In this ceremony each
member of the family confessed his crimes and any judgments which, in
anger, he had invoked on the family or upon the particular member of
it then ill; and, as a proof that he revoked all such imprecations, he
took a little water in his mouth, and spurted it out towards the
person who was sick.

In _surgery_, they lanced ulcers with a shell or a shark's tooth, and,
in a similar way, bled from the arm. For inflammatory swellings they
sometimes tried local bleeding; but shampooing and rubbing with oil
were the more common remedies in such cases. Cuts they washed in the
sea, and bound up with a leaf. Into wounds in the scalp th