Their ideas on obstetrics are equally unscientific, and a medical man going near a woman at her confinement appeared to them more out of place than a female medical student appears to us in a dissecting-room. A case of twins, however, happening, and the ointment of all the doctors of the town proving utterly insufficient to effect the relief which a few seconds of English art afforded, the prejudice vanished at once. As it would have been out of the question for me to have entered upon this branch of the profession--as indeed it would be inexpedient for any medical man to devote himself exclusively, in a thinly-peopled country, to the practice of medicine--I thereafter reserved myself for the difficult cases only, and had the satisfaction of often conferring great benefits on poor women in their hour of sorrow. The poor creatures are often placed in a little hut built for the purpose, and are left without any assistance whatever, and the numbers of umbilical herniae which are met with in consequence is very great. The women suffer less at their confinement than is the case in civilized countries; perhaps from their treating it, not as a disease, but as an operation of nature, requiring no change of diet except a feast of meat and abundance of fresh air. The husband on these occasions is bound to slaughter for his lady an ox, or goat, or sheep, according to his means.
My knowledge in the above line procured for me great fame in a department in which I could lay no claim to merit. A woman came a distance of one hundred miles for relief in a complaint which seemed to have baffled the native doctors; a complete cure was the result. Some twelve months after she returned to her husband, she bore a son. Her husband having previously reproached her for being barren, she sent me a handsome present, and proclaimed all over the country that I possessed a medicine for the cure of sterility. The consequence was, that I was teased with applications from husbands and wives from all parts of the country. Some came upward of two hundred miles to purchase the great boon, and it was in vain for me to explain that I had only cured the disease of the other case. The more I denied, the higher their offers rose; they would give any money for the "child medicine"; and it was really heart-rending to hear the earnest entreaty, and see the tearful eye, which spoke the intense desire for offspring: "I am getting old; you see gray hairs here and there on my head, and I have no child; you know how Bechuana husbands cast their old wives away; what can I do? I have no child to bring water to me when I am sick," etc.
The whole of the country adjacent to the Desert, from Kuruman to Kolobeng, or Litubaruba, and beyond up to the latitude of Lake Ngami, is remarkable for its great salubrity of climate. Not only the natives, but Europeans whose constitutions have been impaired by an Indian climate, find the tract of country indicated both healthy and restorative. The health and longevity of the missionaries have always been fair, though mission-work is not very conducive to either elsewhere. Cases have been known in which patients have come from the coast with complaints closely resembling, if they were not actually, those of consumption; and they have recovered by the influence of the climate alone. It must always be borne in mind that the climate near the coast, from which we received such very favorable reports of the health of the British troops, is actually inferior for persons suffering from pulmonary complaints to that of any part not subjected to the influence of sea-air. I have never seen the beneficial effects of the inland climate on persons of shattered constitutions, nor heard their high praises of the benefit they have derived from traveling, without wishing that its bracing effects should become more extensively known in England. No one who has visited the region I have above mentioned fails to remember with pleasure the wild, healthful gipsy life of wagon-traveling.
A considerable proportion of animal diet seems requisite here. Independent of the want of salt, we required meat in as large quantity daily as we do in England, and no bad effects, in the way of biliousness, followed the free use of flesh, as in other hot climates. A vegetable diet causes acidity and heartburn.