ly instance I
ever met with of a man weeping in this country.

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