9. The Aborigines of Australia are very subject to dysentery, but not to the fatal extent as Europeans: their remedy for this disorder is drinking plentifully of the decoction of wattle bark and eating gum in the day, and pills night and morning made by themselves of wattle bark and gum.
10. If of long standing, the patient is compelled to lie on the back; the native doctor places his foot on the patient's ear, and presses this organ until water literally gushes from the patient's eyes; however rough the treatment, I have known this operation to give relief, and the patient to be cured.
11. The blacks study much the color of the spittle in those affected in the lungs, and know well its stages. When the patient begins to expectorate blood, much attention is paid him; should this increase, which is generally the case, the doctors hold a consultation, and when once a consultation is held the doctors will not allow the patient to take any more medicine from the whites. The invalid is laid on his back and held firm by three or four blacks, whilst the native doctor keeps continually pressing with his feet, and even jumping on his belly. I need scarcely state that this cruel practice brings on premature death.
12. Though this disease (venereal) in the first instance must have been contracted from the whites, the native doctors have prescribed a cure which, though simple, has proved efficacious: they boil the wattle bark till it becomes very strong, and use it as a lotion to the parts affected. I can state from my own personal knowledge of three Goulburn blacks, having this disease so deeply rooted in them that the then colonial surgeon, Dr. Cousin, on examining them, said life could not be saved unless they entered the hospital and had an operation performed, which they would not consent to; after eighteen months these three blacks returned to Melbourne among the tribes (two were young and the other middle-aged) perfectly cured, and the blacks assured me that they had only used the wattle bark lotion. Dr. Wilmot, our late coroner, also saw these three blacks whilst in this state, and after their soundness, and in his report upon the Aborigines stated: "However violent the disease may appear among Aborigines that it could not enter into their system, as it did in European constitutions."
13. In the Aboriginal primitive state, in times of sickness, as influenza or other diseases prevalent, they invariably carried fire about with them wherever they went on thick pieces of bark which they provided for the day's journey.
14. The Aboriginal doctor's treatment in fevers is strictly the cold water system, no matter what kind of fever it may be, accompanied with prohibition of animal food. The doctors have a quantity of water by them, fill their mouths full, and spurt it over the whole of the patient's body, back and front, and for a considerable time on the navel, then with their hands throw it over face and breast, then lay the patient on the back, breathe and blow on the navel, incantating continually while operating. If the patient be young, the doctor will carry him and plunge him into the river or creek; the adult patient will voluntarily plunge himself in three or four times a day. The blacks obstinately persist in this mode of treatment, although they find death generally the result. I was not a little surprised to find many years back that this was also the mode of treatment adopted by the natives of the South Sea Islands. I was called
