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?
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