found inside a patient was on the Ogowe from two native friends, both of them very intelligent, reliable men, one of them a Bible reader. They said that about two years previously a relation of theirs had been badly witched. A doctor had been called in, who administered an emetic, and there appeared upon the scene a strange little animal that grew with visible rapidity. An hour after its coming to light it crawled and got out of the basin, and finally it flew away. It had bat's wings and a body and tail like a lizard. This catawampus, my informant held, had been witched into the man when it was "small, small"—namely, very small. It might, they thought, have been given to their relation in some food or drink by an enemy, but for sure, if it had not been disturbed by that emetic, it would have grown up inside the man and have eaten its way out through his vitals.
From the whole of the above statements I think I have shown you that if as a witch doctor you are called in to a patient who is ill, but who is not showing blood anywhere, your diagnosis will be that he has got some sort or another of devil the matter with him, and that the first indication is to find out who put that devil in, because, in the majority of cases, until you know this you can't get it out; the second is to get it out; the third is to prevent its getting adrift, and into some one else.
I have only briefly sketched the ideas and methods of witch doctors in West Africa, in so far as treatment is concerned. The infinite variety of methods employed in detecting who has been the witch in a given case; the infinite variety of incantations and so on, I have no space to dwell on here, and will conclude by giving you a general sketch of the career of a witch doctor.
