glasses or Calabashes again. Their Lancet is a sharp Knife, with which they cut through the Flesh held between their Fingers.
This, instead of relieving, sometimes seems rather to add more pain to the place, by making a Flux of Blood that way. There are few Negros on whom one may not see a great many Cicatrices of Scars, the remains of these Scarrifications, for Diseases or Ornament, on all their Faces and Bodies, and these Scarifications are common to them in their own Countries, and the Cicatrices thought to add beauty to them. ** John Lok. ap. Hakl. pag. 33. The Negros called Papas have most of these Scarifications. Other Negros take great pleasure in having their woolly curled Hair, cut into Lanes or Walks as the Parterre of a Garden, and this I have seen them do, for want of a better Instrument, with a broken piece of a Glass Bottle.
Another very general Remedy in almost every Disease, is mixing Clay and Water, and plaistering over either some part, or all the Body in the warm Sun; but as this must of necessity stop the insensible transpiration, so it rarely misses to add a Cough to the Patients Malady, and always, by what I saw, fails of the Cure of the Distemper. Although I will not say but that in some Diseases it may avail.
They use very few Decoctions of Herbs, no Distillations, nor Infusions, but usually take the Herbs in substance. For instance, in a Clap, they grind the Roots of Fingrigo and Lime-Tree, between two Stones, and stir them into Lime-Juice till it be pretty thick, and so make the Patient take it evening and morning for some time. This is the same method of preparing Medicines, with what in the East-Indies is practised, for I have seen many Simples from thence, and all, or most, are to be ground on a Stone with some simple Liquor, and so given the Patient.
Besides Simples, the Negros use very much bleeding in the Nose with a Lancet for the Head-ach. They thrust up the Lancet into the tip of the nose, after tying a Ligature about the Neck, and some drops of Blood follow, whence they think themselves relieved in Colds, with Hoarseness and stuffed Noses.
Bathing is very much used by them. They boil Bay-Leaves, Wild-Sage, &c. in water, in one of their Pots, when boil'd they tye a Fasciculus of these Plants up together, and by putting that into the Decoction sprinkle their Bodies all over with it as fast as they can, they being naked.
The Negros and Indians use to Bath themselves in fair water every day, as often as conveniently they can.
I have heard a great deal of their great Feats in curing several Diseases, but could never find them any way reasonable, nor succesful in any, and that little they know of Simples here, seems tocome
