On this subject we will introduce the testimony of Nathaniel Pearce, an eye-witness, who resided nine years in Abyssinia.

"The Tigretier," he says he, "is more common among the women than among the men.

It seizes the body as if with a violent fever, and from that turns to a lingering sickness, which reduces the patients to skeletons, and often kills them if the relations cannot procure the proper remedy.
During this sickness their speech is changed to a kind of stuttering, which no one can understand but those afflicted with the same disorder.
When the relations find the malady to be the real tigretier, they join together to defray the expense of curing it; the first remedy they in general attempt is to procure the assistance of a learned Dofter, who reads the Gospel of St.John, and drenches the patient with cold water daily for the space of seven days, an application that very often proves fatal.

The most effectual cure, though far more expensive than the former, is as follows:--The relations hire for a certain sum of money a band of trumpeters, drummers, and fifers, and buy a quantity of liquor; then all the young men and women of the place assemble at the patient's house to perform the following most extraordinary ceremony.
"I was once called in by a neighbour to see his wife, a very young woman, who had the misfortune to be afflicted with this disorder; and the man being an old acquaintance of mine, and always a close comrade in the camp, I went every day, when at home, to see her, but I could not be of any service to her, though she never refused my medicines.

At this time I could not understand a word she said, although she talked very freely, nor could any of her relations understand her.