dvantage to it. These mystical doctors
shared the contempt still so prevalent among ourselves for a treatment
based on experiment and reason, and regarded the administration of
emetics and purgatives, baths and diuretics, with a contempt quite equal
to that of the disciples of Hahnemann. The practitioners of the rational
school formed a separate class among the Indians, and had nothing to do
with amulets, powwows, or spirits.[265-2] They were of different name
and standing, and though held in less estimation, such valuable
additions to the pharmacopoeia as guaiacum, cinchona, and ipecacuanha,
were learned from them. The priesthood scorned such ignoble means. Were
they summoned to a patient, they drowned his groans in a barbarous
clangor of instruments in order to fright away the demon that possessed
him; they sucked and blew upon the diseased organ, they sprinkled him
with water, and catching it again threw it on the ground, thus drowning
out the disease; they rubbed the part with their hands, and exhibiting a
bone or splinter asserted that they drew it from the body, and that it
had been the cause of the malady, they manufactured a little image to
represent the spirit of sickness, and spitefully knocked it to pieces,
thus vicariously destroying its prototype; they sang doleful and
monotonous chants at the top of their voices, screwed their
countenances into hideous grimaces, twisted their bodies into unheard of
contortions, and by all accounts did their utmost to merit the
honorarium they demanded for their services. A double motive spurred
them to spare no pains. For if they failed, not only was their
reputation gone, but the next expert called in was likely enough to
hint, with that urbanity so traditional in the profession, that the
illness was in fact caused or much increased by the antagonistic nature
of the remedies previously employed, whereupon the chances were that the
doctor's life fell into greater jeopardy than that of his quondam
patient.

Considering the probable result of this treatment, we may be allowed to
doubt whether it redounded on the whole very much to the honor of the
fraternity. Their strong points are rather to be looked for in the real
knowledge gained by a solitary and reflective life, by an earnest study
of the appearances of nature, and of those hints and forest signs which
are wholly lost on the white man and beyond the ordinary insight of a
native. Travellers often tell of changes of the