Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 November 1888 — A SUDDEN CURE. [ARTICLE]

A SUDDEN CURE.

How a Medicine Mun Kmtored Imaginative Patient. Quackery and superstition are not peculiar to any one country. An old resident of Australia supplies instance of what may be called imaginatiou-heal-. ing, as he witnessed it among (lie Bushmen. It illustrates vividly the power which a mental; impression has, first to make a man sick, and then to, make him well again. In the center of the group, close to one of the tires, lay stretched at full length a man who appeared to be very ill. His chest heaved visibly and hurriedly under, the opossum rug which was thrown over him; the perspriation stood in big drops on his brow; the whole expression of his face was one of unmistakable anguish and terror. Mr. T—: — explained in a whisper that the man thought himself bewitched: he believed that some secret enemy had, by supernatural means, robbed him of his kidney fat! This part of the body was, by the Australian. aborigines, considered the most vital of their frame. When they killed an enemy, bis kidney fatwas curefullyextracted. Sometimes it was eaten, but more generally preserved as a charm. No threat could terrify the savage more than that of depriving him of this important substance. On the present occasion the , terror and distress of the man who believed himself to be so deprived were so- intense that I am convinced lie would have died had not his mind been set at rest. The medicine-man belonging to. the tribe had retired to a distance from the group, and was (invisible in the darkness. He was supposed to be engaged in a struggle with the supernatural power that i ad afllictdd the sufferer, and his hoarse voice was audible through the death like stillness, as it rose and fell in a kind of wild chant alternately pleading and menacing. Once he eame to the camp to look at the patient, and bade him take courage, as he hoped to prevail over the evil spirit; then retinal again and was lost in the darkness, where he resumed his incantations. Finally he came back, with a triumphant air,-, making a feint of concealing something in the folds of his rug. Stooping over the recumbent form of his patient, he pretended, with many gesticulations and other ceremonies to restore the missing fat. The effect was magical. The sick man who had a moment before been trembling and shivering in the most abject fear, presently rose steadily froip the ground, his distorted countenance recovered its serenity and about five minutes later he was squatted among the group and perfectly happy.

A Convicts’ Eden. A paper -was read recently by the Rev. T. S. Lea, at the London Geographical society on the island of Fernando do Noronba. This Island is the Brazilian convicts’ settlement, ami is about two hundred and ninety miles northeast of Pernambuco. Mr. Lea was. one of a party of three, and was engaged in collecting specimens for the British museum. Three-quarters of the insects taken were new to science; of plants the e were 290 species, of which about thirty were peculiar to t,he Island. Oralis of great alacrity ran about on the rocks, and leaped from one stone to another, while crayfish and cutllfffish.' _ abOTimled. Fish of the most gorgeous colors—gold, green, violet, and scarlet abounded. There were no freshwater fisji. About fourteen hundred -onvicts were on the island, and besides them 160 soldiers and 4'oo women and children. The convicts met with were neither degraded nor rulflanly, and liscipline ■ Was maintained without difficulty.