BUCK MEDICINE

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 April 1935, Page 2

BUCK MEDICINE

ABORIGINES AS DOCTORS.

From the wilds of the Cape Peninsula in Northern Queensland comes the story of how the life of a white prospector was saved in an unusual way by aborigines. The PJ 0S ’ pector, Harry Eiling, was working alone in rugged mountainous country when he‘fell seriously ill with an attack of influenza. Too weak to leave his camp, and being many miles from the nearest white settlement, he might have died but for the timely arrival of two aborigines, who had come to beg for tobacco. The prospector promised them all his tobacco if they would go for help. Instead, the natives decided to cure him. They Their treatment was this: They dug a long, narrow pit, large enough to accommodate the suffering prospector lying down, and built a fire in this until the interior of the pit was steaming hot. Then they removed the glowing ashes with a stick, and without delay lined the pit with gum leaves. The prospector was then stripped of his clothes, placed in the pit, and covered with another layer of gum leaves, and, finally, with soil. Only his face was left showing. For the next hour he was left to steam in this pit.

The whole time.a native sat near ms head, wiping the perspiration from his face with a piece of cloth. When about an hour had passed the prospector was lifted from the pit and rushed to his tent, where the natives, after they had given him a brisk rub down, rolled him in his blankets, and left him to sleep off the effects of the treatment.' The next morning he was feeling better, but weak; the following day he was able to resume work. Many people believe that the aborigines know nothing about healing, and that their methods of curing ills are based on magic—“faith cures” with nothing to commend them. That is true of some of the weird methods of curing practised in some tribes. I saw a medicine man cure a native s backache by allegedly extracting a stone from the patient’s back (writes “Old Northerner"). It was just a remarkable piece of palming. But there are other methods which, though crude, are very effective, and have something to commend them.

TREATMENT FOR SUNSTROKE. One of the pioneer settlers of Queensland, Mr Stewart Russell, was cu,red in 1842 of. a severe attack of sunstroke. The treatment, in Russell’s own record of the incident, was: “A hole was scooped out alongside me until it had assumed almost the appearance of a shallow grave. Divested of every rag on my back, I was placed in thig. Some large leaves of a water plant were placqd over my head to protect it, and hot sand was shovelled over me up to my chin. 1. could no.t move my head. Arms were packed in with the rest, and I was in a straight-jacket of hot sand pressed in a solid heap upon my carcase. I felt no pain. The perspiration ran in tiny rivulets from my head over my face into my eyes and ears. I was in a vapour furnace. I was left for an hour, then quickly unearthed and covered with blankets. I then fell asleep, and when I awoke in about six hours I was well! Weak, but terribly thirsty. I could have hugged the natives in gratitude, but they were all gone.” Many white men in the far north have had dangerous cuts and wounds cured quickly by mud plasters prepared by the natives. I know <mu man who was badly gashed by the tusks of a wild boar in a northern jungle. Some natives he had with him treated the wounds with their plasters, and the doctor he visited subsequently described the healing of the wounds as miraculous. When I was travelling with a party through Cape York Peninsula, the efficacy of these native plasters was revealed to me. One of our native “boys” was badly torn across the left > arm by a razor-sharp barb of the lawyer-caue. The cut was five inches long and about an inch deep. We feared blood poisoning, but the native would not allow us to attempt to doctor him, preferring instead to use his own tribal method of a mud plaster. The wound was washed out with clean water, and then liberally treated with the milky juice of the quinine tree, which prows profusely in those parts, A plaster was then prepared of some clean, carefully selected mud, with which some pounded eucalyptus leaves were mixed. Some of this mixture was rubbed into the wound —the native bearing J]}e ordeal without a murmur—and the remainder was plastered over the outside, covered with paper bark, and kept in position with string. In less than a week the deep wound had healed. It should not be imagined that the nativej use any mud they come across; the mud is always gathered from the brink of clean, wholesome water, and the natives are particularly careful not to use mud from a spot at which animals drink. STEAM FOR INDIGESTION.

On one occasion I saw an aborigine undergoing treatrpent for indigestion, a complaint which is very prevalent amongst most northern tribes. The camp was on the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and it contained what was really a communal indigestioncuring outfit. This was simply a rough platform of saplings with a fireplace underneath iL When a patient was treated, the platform was spread with a thick covering of fresh ironwood-tree leaves and then a layer of wet green grass. The patient lay face dov, nward on this and was covered with more leaves and grass. Then a fire was made , under the platform, and the sufferer was left to steam for a time. After the steaming a wash with cold water was expected to complete the cure. Inevitably it did, or, at least, it appeared to do so. Along the eastern coast of the Cape York Peninsula are found two species of fish capable of giving electric shocks. The fish use this power for killing other fish for food; one is called the star-gazer fish and the other the numb-fish. Both have electric organs above their eyes. The electric shocks the fish can give are sufficient to make a human being jump, and some of the native tribes used to believe that a bath in water containing half a dozen or more of these electrified fish would cure any illness. At any rate, the repeated shocks from the fish generally were sufficient to I drive any suffering native from the bath, and even if the treatment did not effect a cure the native would say that it did, lest he be given another bath.

The northern aborigines use mud pills for such common ailments as headaches and constipation. Clean mud and various herbs, such as pounded eucalyptus leaves, are employed in making the pellets, which effect some astonishing cures.