Read Ebook: Medical Inquiries and Observations Vol. 1 The Second Edition Revised and Enlarged by the Author by Rush Benjamin

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AN INQUIRY

INTO THE

AMONG THE

INDIANS OF NORTH-AMERICA;

AND A

COMPARATIVE VIEW

OF THEIR

DISEASES AND REMEDIES WITH THOSE OF CIVILIZED NATIONS.

Read before the AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, held at PHILADELPHIA, on the 4th of February, 1774.

GENTLEMEN,

I rise with peculiar diffidence to address you upon this occasion, when I reflect upon the entertainment you proposed to yourselves from the eloquence of that learned member, Mr. CHARLES THOMPSON, whom your suffrages appointed to this honour after the delivery of the last anniversary oration. Unhappily for the interests of science, his want of health has not permitted him to comply with your appointment. I beg, therefore, that you would forget, for a while, the abilities necessary to execute this task with propriety, and listen with candour to the efforts of a member, whose attachment to the society was the only qualification that entitled him to the honour of your choice.

This INQUIRY was the subject of an Anniversary Oration. The style of an oration is therefore preserved in many parts of it.

I shall first limit the tribes of Indians who are to be the objects of this inquiry, to those who inhabit that part of North-America which extends from the 30th to the 60th degree of latitude. When we exclude the Esquimaux, who inhabit the shores of Hudson's bay, we shall find a general resemblance in the colour, manners, and state of society, among all the tribes of Indians who inhabit the extensive tract of country above-mentioned.

Civilians have divided nations into savage, barbarous, and civilized. The savage live by fishing and hunting; the barbarous, by pasturage or cattle; and the civilized, by agriculture. Each of these is connected together in such a manner, that the whole appear to form different parts of a circle. Even the manners of the most civilized nations partake of those of the savage. It would seem as if liberty and indolence were the highest pursuits of man; and these are enjoyed in their greatest perfection by savages, or in the practice of customs which resemble those of savages.

The Indians of North-America partake chiefly of the manner of savages. In the earliest accounts we have of them, we find them cultivating a spot of ground. The maize is an original grain among them. The different dishes of it which are in use among the white people still retain Indian names.

It will be unnecessary to show that the Indians live in a state of society adapted to all the exigencies of their mode of life. Those who look for the simplicity and perfection of the state of nature, must seek it in systems, as absurd in philosophy, as they are delightful in poetry.

Before we attempt to ascertain the number or history of the diseases of the Indians, it will be necessary to inquire into those customs among them which we know influence diseases. For this purpose I shall,

First, Mention a few facts which relate to the birth and treatment of their children.

Secondly, I shall speak of their diet.

Thirdly, Of the customs which are peculiar to the sexes, and,

Fourthly, Of those customs which are common to them both.

Many of the facts contained in the Natural History of Medicine among the Indians in this Inquiry, are taken from La Hontan and Charlevoix's histories of Canada; but the most material of them are taken from persons who had lived or travelled among the Indians. The author acknowledges himself indebted in a particular manner to Mr. Edward Hand, surgeon in the 18th regiment, afterwards brigadier-general in the army of the United States, who, during several years' residence at Fort Pitt, directed his inquiries into their customs, diseases, and remedies, with a success that does equal honour to his ingenuity and diligence.

Much of the future health of the body depends upon its original stamina. A child born of healthy parents always brings into the world a system formed by nature to resist the causes of diseases. The treatment of children among the Indians, tends to secure this hereditary firmness of constitution. Their first food is their mother's milk. To harden them against the action of heat and cold they are plunged every day into cold water. In order to facilitate their being moved from place to place, and at the same time to preserve their shape, they are tied to a board, where they lie on their backs for six, ten, or eighteen months. A child generally sucks its mother till it is two years old, and sometimes longer. It is easy to conceive how much vigour their bodies must acquire from this simple, but wholesome nourishment. The appetite we sometimes observe in children for flesh is altogether artificial. The peculiar irritability of the system in infancy forbids stimulating aliment of all kinds. Nature never calls for animal food till she has provided the child with those teeth which are necessary to divide it. I shall not undertake to determine how far the wholesome quality of the mother's milk is increased by her refusing the embraces of her husband, during the time of giving suck.

The Indians have no set time for eating, but obey the gentle appetites of nature as often as they are called by them. After whole days spent in the chace or in war, they often commit those excesses in eating, to which long abstinence cannot fail of prompting them. It is common to see them spend three or four hours in satisfying their hunger. This is occasioned not more by the quantity they eat, than by the pains they take in masticating it. They carefully avoid drinking water in their marches, from an opinion that it lessens their ability to bear fatigue.

Natural History of Guiana.

The customs peculiar to the Indian MEN, consist chiefly in those employments which are necessary to preserve animal life, and to defend their nation. These employments are hunting and war, each of which is conducted in a manner that tends to call forth every fibre into exercise, and to ensure them the possession of the utmost possible health. In times of plenty and peace, we see them sometimes rising from their beloved indolence, and shaking off its influence by the salutary exercises of dancing and swimming. The Indian men seldom marry before they are thirty years of age: they no doubt derive considerable vigour from this custom; for while they are secured by it from the enervating effects of the premature dalliance of love, they may insure more certain fruitfulness to their wives, and entail more certain health upon their children. Tacitus describes the same custom among the Germans, and attributes to it the same good effects. "Sera juvenum venus, eoque inexhausta pubertas; nec virgines festinantur; eadem juventa, similis proceritas, pares validique miscentur; ac robora parentum liberi referunt."

Caesar, in his history of the Gallic war, gives the same account of the ancient Germans. His words are "Qui diutissimi impuberes permanserunt, maximam inter suos ferunt laudem: hoc ali staturam, ali vires, nervasque confirmari putant." Lib. vi. xxi.

Among the Indian men, it is deemed a mark of heroism to bear the most exquisite pain without complaining; upon this account they early inure themselves to burning part of their bodies with fire, or cutting them with sharp instruments. No young man can be admitted to the honours of manhood or war, who has not acquitted himself well in these trials of patience and fortitude. It is easy to conceive how much this contributes to give a tone to the nervous system, which renders it less subject to the occasional causes of diseases.

It is a practice among the Indians never to drink before dinner, when they work or travel. Experience teaches, that filling the stomach with cold water in the forenoon, weakens the appetite, and makes the system more sensible of heat and fatigue.

The state of society among the Indians excludes the influence of most of those passions which disorder the body. The turbulent effects of anger are concealed in deep and lasting resentments. Envy and ambition are excluded by their equality of power and property. Nor is it necessary that the perfections of the whole sex should be ascribed to one, to induce them to marry. "The weakness of love which is so much indulged in ages of humanity and politeness, is regarded among savages as the most unpardonable effeminacy. A young man would think himself disgraced for ever, if he showed the least preference of one woman above another, or did not express the most complete indifference, both about the time when, and the person to whom, he was to be married." Thus are they exempted from those violent or lasting diseases, which accompany the several stages of such passions in both sexes among civilized nations.

Theory of Moral Sentiments.

It is remarkable that there are no deformed Indians. Some have suspected, from this circumstance, that they put their deformed children to death; but nature here acts the part of an unnatural mother. The severity of the Indian manners destroy them.

Since the intercourse of the white people with the Indians, we find some of them deformed in their limbs. This deformity, upon inquiry, appears to be produced by those accidents, quarrels, &c. which have been introduced among them by spiritous liquors.

From a review of the customs of the Indians, we need not be surprised at the stateliness, regularity of features, and dignity of aspect by which they are characterized. Where we observe these among ourselves, there is always a presumption of their being accompanied with health, and a strong constitution. The circulation of the blood is more languid in the Indians, than in persons who are in the constant exercise of the habits of civilized life. Out of eight Indian men whose pulses I once examined at the wrists, I did not meet with one in whom the artery beat more than sixty strokes in a minute.

The marks of old age appear more early among Indian, than among civilized nations.

Having finished our inquiry into the physical customs of the Indians, we shall now proceed to inquire into their diseases.

We need only recollect the custom among the Indians, of sleeping in the open air in a variable climate; the alternate action of heat and cold upon their bodies, to which the warmth of their cabins exposes them; their long marches; their excessive exercise; their intemperance in eating, to which their long fasting and their public feasts naturally prompt them; and, lastly, the vicinity of their habitations to the banks of rivers, in order to discover the empire of diseases among them in every stage of their lives. They have in vain attempted to elude the general laws of mortality, while their mode of life subjects them to these remote, but certain causes of diseases.

From what we know of the action of these powers upon the human body, it will hardly be necessary to appeal to facts to determine that FEVERS constitute the only diseases among the Indians. These fevers are occasioned by the insensible qualities of the air. Those which are produced by cold and heat are of the inflammatory kind, such as pleurisies, peripneumonies, and rheumatisms. Those which are produced by the insensible qualities of the air, or by putrid exhalations, are intermitting, remitting, inflammatory, and malignant, according as the exhalations are combined with more or less heat or cold. The DYSENTERY comes under the class of fevers. It appears to be the febris introversa of Dr. Sydenham.

The Indians are subject to ANIMAL and VEGETABLE POISONS. The effects of these upon the body, are in some degree analogous to the exhalations we have mentioned. When they do not bring on sudden death, they produce, according to their force, either a common inflammatory, or a malignant fever.

The SMALL POX and the VENEREAL DISEASE were communicated to the Indians of North-America by the Europeans. Nor can I find that they were ever subject to the SCURVY. Whether this was obviated by their method of preserving their flesh, or by their mixing it at all times with vegetables, I shall not undertake to determine. Their peculiar customs and manners seem to have exempted them from this, as well as from the common diseases of the skin.

I have heard of two or three cases of the GOUT among the Indians, but it was only among those who had learned the use of rum from the white people. A question naturally occurs here, and that is, why does not the gout appear more frequently among that class of people, who consume the greatest quantity of rum among ourselves? To this I answer, that the effects of this liquor upon those enfeebled people, are too sudden and violent, to admit of their being thrown upon the extremities; as we know them to be among the Indians. They appear only in visceral obstructions, and a complicated train of chronic diseases. Thus putrid miasmata are sometimes too strong to bring on a fever, but produce instant debility and death. The gout is seldom heard of in Russia, Denmark, or Poland. Is this occasioned by the vigour of constitution peculiar to the inhabitants of those northern countries? or is it caused by their excessive use of spirituous liquors, which produce the same chronic complaints among them, which we said were common among the lower class of people in this country? The similarity of their diseases makes the last of these suppositions the most probable. The effects of wine, like tyranny in a well formed government, are felt first in the extremities; while spirits, like a bold invader, seize at once upon the vitals of the constitution.

After much inquiry, I have not been able to find a single instance of FATUITY among the Indians, and but few instances of MELANCHOLY and MADNESS; nor can I find any accounts of diseases from WORMS among them. Worms are common to most animals; they produce diseases only in weak, or increase them in strong constitutions. Hence they have no place in the nosological systems of physic. Nor is DENTITION accompanied by disease among the Indians. The facility with which the healthy children of healthy parents cut their teeth among civilized nations, gives us reason to conclude that the Indian children never suffer from this quarter.

Indian children are not exempted from worms. It is common with the Indians, when a fever in their children is ascribed by the white people to worms , to say, "the fever makes the worms come, and not the worms the fever."

The Indians appear moreover to be strangers to diseases and pains in the teeth.

The employments of the Indians subject them to many accidents; hence we sometimes read of WOUNDS, FRACTURES, and LUXATIONS among them.

Having thus pointed out the natural diseases of the Indians, and shown what diseases are foreign to them, we may venture to conclude, that FEVERS, OLD AGE, CASUALTIES, and WAR are the only natural outlets of human life. War is nothing but a disease; it is founded in the imperfection of political bodies, just as fevers are founded on the weakness of the animal body. Providence in these diseases seems to act like a mild legislature, which mitigates the severity of death, by inflicting it in a manner the least painful, upon the whole, to the patient and the survivors.

Let us now inquire into the REMEDIES of the Indians. These, like their diseases, are simple, and few in number. Among the first of them we shall mention the POWERS OF NATURE. Fevers, we said formerly, constituted the chief of the diseases among the Indians; they are likewise, in the hands of nature, the principal instruments to remove the evils which threaten her dissolution; but the event of these efforts of nature, no doubt, soon convinced the Indians of the danger of trusting her in all cases; and hence, in the earliest accounts we have of their manners, we read of persons who were intrusted with the office of physicians.

It will be difficult to find out the exact order in which the Indian remedies were suggested by nature or discovered by art; nor will it be easy to arrange them in proper order. I shall, however, attempt it, by reducing them to NATURAL and ARTIFICIAL.

To the class of NATURAL REMEDIES belongs the Indian practice of abstracting from their patients all kinds of stimulating aliment. The compliance of the Indians with the dictates of nature, in the early stage of a disease, no doubt, prevents, in many cases, their being obliged to use any other remedy. They follow nature still closer, in allowing their patients to drink plentifully of cold water; this being the only liquor a patient calls for in a fever.

Sweating is likewise a natural remedy. It was probably suggested by observing fevers to be terminated by it. I shall not inquire how far these sweats are essential to the crisis of a fever. The Indian mode of procuring this evacuation is as follows: the patient is confined in a close tent, or wigwam, over a hole in the earth, in which a red hot stone is placed; a quantity of water is thrown upon this stone, which instantly involves the patient in a cloud of vapour and sweat; in this situation he rushes out, and plunges himself into a river, from whence he retires to his bed. If the remedy has been used with success, he rises from his bed in four and twenty hours, perfectly recovered from his indisposition. This remedy is used not only to cure fevers, but remove that uneasiness which arises from fatigue of body.

A third natural remedy among the Indians, is PURGING. The fruits of the earth, the flesh of birds, and other animals feeding upon particular vegetables, and, above all, the spontaneous efforts of nature, early led the Indians to perceive the necessity and advantages of this evacuation.

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