No matter how cruelly the women might be treated by their husbands, they hated sympathy, so their women friends always left them alone.

It often surprised me how quickly the blacks' most terrible wounds healed; and yet they were only treated with a kind of clay and leaves of the wild rose.
I am here reminded of the native doctor.

This functionary was called a _rui_, and he effected most of his cures with a little shell, with which he rubbed assiduously upon the affected part.

Thus it will be seen that the medical treatment was a form of massage, the rubbing being done first in a downward direction and then crosswise.

I must say, however, that the blacks were very rarely troubled with illness, their most frequent disorder being usually the result of excessive gorging when a particularly ample supply of food was forthcoming--say, after a big _battue_ over a tribal preserve.
In an ordinary case of overfeeding, the medicine man would rub his patient's stomach with such vigour as often to draw blood.