Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - David Livingstone (best romantic books to read .TXT) 📗

use of my wonted remedies, but Major Sicard and his little boy were confined much longer. There was a general fall of 4 Deg. of temperature from the middle of March, 84 Deg. at 9 A.M., and 87 Deg. at 9 P.M.; the greatest heat being 90 Deg. at midday, and the lowest 81 Deg. at sunrise.

It afforded me pleasure to attend the invalids in their sickness, though I was unable to show a tithe of the gratitude I felt for the commandant's increasing kindness. My quinine and other remedies were nearly all expended, and no fresh supply was to be found here, there being no doctors at Tete, and only one apothecary with the troops, whose stock of medicine was also small. The Portuguese, however, informed me that they had the cinchona bark growing in their country --

that there was a little of it to be found at Tete --

whole forests of it at Senna and near the delta of Kilimane.

It seems quite a providential arrangement that the remedy for fever should be found in the greatest abundance where it is most needed.

On seeing the leaves, I stated that it was not the `Cinchona longifolia'

from which it is supposed the quinine of commerce is extracted, but the name and properties of this bark made me imagine that it was a cinchonaceous tree. I could not get the flower, but when I went to Senna I tried to bring away a few small living trees with earth in a box. They, however, all died when we came to Kilimane.

Failing in this mode of testing the point, I submitted a few leaves and seed-vessels to my friend, Dr. Hooker, who kindly informs me that they belong "apparently to an apocyneous plant, very nearly allied to the Malouetia Heudlotii (of Decaisne), a native of Senegambia." Dr. H. adds, "Various plants of this natural order are reputed powerful febrifuges, and some of them are said to equal the cinchona in their effects." It is called in the native tongue Kumbanzo.

The flowers are reported to be white. The pods are in pairs, a foot or fifteen inches in length, and contain a groove on their inner sides.

The thick soft bark of the root is the part used by the natives; the Portuguese use that of the tree itself. I immediately began to use a decoction of the bark of the root, and my men found it so efficacious that they collected small quantities of it for themselves, and kept it in little bags for future use. Some of them said that they knew it in their own country, but I never happened to observe it.

The decoction is given after the first paroxysm of the complaint is over.

The Portuguese believe it to have the same effects as the quinine, and it may prove a substitute for that invaluable medicine.

There are numbers of other medicines in use among the natives, but I have always been obliged to regret want of time to ascertain which were useful and which of no value. We find a medicine in use by a tribe in one part of the country, and the same plant employed by a tribe a thousand miles distant. This surely must arise from some inherent virtue in the plant. The Boers under Potgeiter visited Delgoa Bay for the first time about ten years ago, in order to secure a port on the east coast for their republic.

They had come from a part of the interior where the disease called croup occasionally prevails. There was no appearance of the disease among them at the period of their visit, but the Portuguese inhabitants of that bay found that they had left it among them, and several adults were cut off by a form of the complaint called `Laryngismus stridulus', the disease of which the great Washington died. Similar cases have occurred in the South Sea Islands. Ships have left diseases from which no one on board was suffering at the time of their visit.

Many of the inhabitants here were cut down, usually in three days from their first attack, until a native doctor adopted the plan of scratching the root of the tongue freely with a certain root, and giving a piece of it to be chewed. The cure may have been effected by the scarification only, but the Portuguese have the strongest faith in the virtues of the root, and always keep some of it within reach.

There are also other plants which the natives use in the treatment of fever, and some of them produce `diaphoresis' in a short space of time.

It is certain that we have got the knowledge of the most potent febrifuge in our pharmacopoeia from the natives of another country.

We have no cure for cholera and some other diseases. It might be worth the investigation of those who visit Africa to try and find other remedies in a somewhat similar way to that in which we found the quinine.*

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I add the native names of a few of their remedies in order to assist the inquirer: Mupanda panda: this is used in fever for producing perspiration; the leaves are named Chirussa; the roots dye red, and are very astringent. Goho or Go-o: this is the ordeal medicine; it is both purgative and emetic.

Mutuva or Mutumbue: this plant contains so much oil that it serves as lights in Londa; it is an emollient drink for the cure of coughs, and the pounded leaves answer as soap to wash the head. Nyamucu ucu has a curious softening effect on old dry grain. Mussakasi is believed to remove the effects of the Go-o.

Mudama is a stringent vermifuge. Mapubuza dyes a red color.

Musikizi yields an oil. Shinkondo: a virulent poison; the Maravi use it in their ordeal, and it is very fatal.

Kanunka utare is said to expel serpents and rats by its pungent smell, which is not at all disagreeable to man; this is probably a kind of `Zanthoxylon', perhaps the Z. melancantha of Western Africa, as it is used to expel rats and serpents there. Mussonzoa dyes cloth black.

Mussio: the beans of this also dye black. Kangome, with flowers and fruit like Mocha coffee; the leaves are much like those of the sloe, and the seeds are used as coffee or eaten as beans.

Kanembe-embe: the pounded leaves used as an extemporaneous glue for mending broken vessels. Katunguru is used for killing fish.

Mutavea Nyerere: an active caustic. Mudiacoro: also an external caustic, and used internally. Kapande: another ordeal plant, but used to produce `diaphoresis'. Karumgasura: also diaphoretic.

Munyazi yields an oil, and is one of the ingredients for curing the wounds of poisoned arrows. Uombue: a large root employed in killing fish. Kakumate: used in intermittents. Musheteko: applied to ulcers, and the infusion also internally in amenorrhoea.

Inyakanyanya: this is seen in small, dark-colored, crooked roots of pleasant aromatic smell and slightly bitter taste, and is highly extolled in the treatment of fever; it is found in Manica.

Eskinencia: used in croup and sore-throat. Itaca or Itaka: for diaphoresis in fever; this root is brought as an article of barter by the Arabs to Kilimane; the natives purchase it eagerly.

Mukundukundu: a decoction used as a febrifuge in the same way as quinine; it grows plentifully at Shupanga, and the wood is used as masts for launches. I may here add the recipe of Brother Pedro of Zumbo for the cure of poisoned wounds, in order to show the similarity of practice among the natives of the Zambesi, from whom, in all probability, he acquired his knowledge, and the Bushmen of the Kalahari.

It consists of equal parts of the roots of the Calumba, Musheteko, Abutua, Batatinya, Paregekanto, Itaka, or Kapande, put into a bottle and covered with common castor-oil. As I have before observed, I believe the oily ingredient is the effectual one, and ought to be tried by any one who has the misfortune to get wounded by a Bushman's or Banyai arrow.

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The only other metal, besides gold, we have in abundance in this region, is iron, and that is of excellent quality. In some places it is obtained from what is called the specular iron ore, and also from black oxide.

The latter has been well roasted in the operations of nature, and contains a large proportion of the metal. It occurs generally in tears or rounded lumps, and is but slightly magnetic.

When found in the beds of rivers, the natives know of its existence by the quantity of oxide on the surface, and they find no difficulty in digging it with pointed sticks. They consider English iron as "rotten"; and I have seen, when a javelin of their own iron lighted on the cranium of a hippopotamus, it curled up like the proboscis of a butterfly, and the owner would prepare it for future use by straightening it COLD

with two stones. I brought home some of the hoes which Sekeletu gave me to purchase a canoe, also some others obtained in Kilimane, and they have been found of such good quality that a friend of mine in Birmingham has made an Enfield rifle of them.*

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The following remarks are by a practical blacksmith, one of the most experienced men in the gun-trade. In this trade various qualities of iron are used, and close attention is required to secure for each purpose the quality of iron peculiarly adapted to it: The iron in the two spades strongly resembles Swedish or Russian; it is highly carbonized.

The same qualities are found in both spades.

When chilled in water it has all the properties of steel: see the piece marked I, chilled at one end, and left soft at the other.

When worked hot, it is very malleable: but cold, it breaks quite short and brittle.

The great irregularity found in the working of the iron affords evidence that it has been prepared by inexperienced hands.

This is shown in the bending of the small spade; the thick portion retains its crystallized nature, while the thin part has been changed by the hammering it has undergone.

The large spade shows a very brittle fracture.

The iron is too brittle for gun-work; it would be liable to break.

This iron, if REPEATEDLY heated and hammered, would become decarbonized, and would then possess the qualities found in the spear-head, which, after being curled up by being struck against a hard substance, was restored, by hammering, to its original form without injury.

The piece of iron marked II is a piece of gun-iron of fibrous quality, such as will bend without breaking.

The piece marked III is of crystalline quality; it has been submitted to a process which has changed it to IIII; III and IIII are cut from the same bar. The spade-iron has been submitted to the same process, but no corresponding effect can be produced.

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