The first, the Kahunalapaau proper, comprised all who used plants in the treatment of disease.

Just as the sorcerers understood poisonous vegetables, so the doctors knew the simples which furnished remedies to work cures.

The second kind comprised the spiritual doctors, who had various names, and who seem to have been intermediate between priests and magicians, sharing at once in the attributes of both.

They were: _Kahuna uhane_, the doctors of ghosts and spirits; _Kahuna makani_, doctors of winds; _Kahuna hoonohonoho akua_, who caused the gods to descend on the sick; _Kahuna aumakua_, doctors of diseases of the old; _Kahuna Pele_, doctors or priests of Pele, goddess of volcanoes.
All the doctors of the second kind are still found in the islands,[10] where they have remained idolaters, although they have been for the most part baptized.

There is hardly a Kanaka who has not had recourse to them in his complaints, preferring their cures and their remedies to those of the foreign physicians.