Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 January 1884 — An Indian’s Cure for Headache. [ARTICLE]

An Indian’s Cure for Headache.

Everyone who has been in British Cuiana has heard of the kenaimas, human and spiritual powers of evil, who are the bane and terror of the Indian’s existence. To counteract the malefic influence of the kenaimas, each larger Indian village keeps its peaiman or medicine-man. One of Mr. im Thurn’s most interesting adventures was that in which he placed himself in the hands of a peaiman, who undertook to cure him of a headache, and who, to judge from the author’s description, had in him the making of an admirable spiritualist professor or of a thoughtreader. Mr. im Thurn submitted for six long hours, in a hut on the savannah, to the process of “peaing.” By ventriloquism were produced the most terrible noises, and an extremely clever imitation of the animals of Guiana in whose bodies the kenaimas who had Bestowed the headache were supposed to lurk. The patient describes himself as being all the while in a sort of mesmeric trance, feeling at times the sir driven over his face, “as if soihe big winged thing oame from afar toward the house, passed through the roof, and then settled heavily on the floor; and again, after an interval, as if the same winged thing rose and jmssed away as it had come.” It was interesting, even wonderful; but he was not cured. He” rushed at last into the open savannah and “a wild and pitch-dark night;” and, “bare-headed, bare-footed, and coatless,” with the lightning flashing mow and then behind the distant mountains, waited for the dawn. The peaiman insisted that a cure had been effected, and demanded payment; and, as he produced in proof the kenaima, a caterpillar which had been extracted from Mr. im Timm’s body, his fee, “a look-ing-glass which had cost 4 pence, "could not be denied.—j Sf. James Gazette.