Evening Star Newspaper, March 6, 1932, Page 85

THE SUNDAY WITCH DOCTORS GO MODERN Natives of African Jungles Reluctantly Dis- close Sources of Many Drugs That Now Are Being Used Extensively in Science. “Medicine Men” Form Union to Protect T heir Interests. BY ERIC ROSENTHAL. JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA. ODERN scientists are now study- ing and adopting methods origi- nated by Africa’'s jungle juju wizards. : After having been despised and laughed at since the be- ginning of time, medical experts have come to the conclusion that the kraal sage is often something more than a mere mountebank and that a good deal of his knowledge covers sub- jects on which Western w-earchers have as yet no data. Those bead-hung, white-painted medicine men of the tribal villages, with their pouches of animal skin, all crammed with roots, bits of bone and other apparent junk, are now proved to be the possessors of information which hos- pitals, universities and laboratories in better- settled continents are eager to apply. Wwitch doctors, isanusis, ngakas, dingakas— whatever other titles they give themselves—are the oldest physicians in the world. They are found from Egypt to the Cape of Good Hope and from the Gulf of Guinea to the Red Sea. In the big cities which the white man has built in their territories they wear ragged clothes and choose their quarters in slums where they are not ncticed by the police; out on the veldt and away in the forest they go in all the splendor of immemorial savagery—painted and tattooed in hidec.; colors, with anklets of seed pods or dog's teeth, kilts of mcnkey skin and a “con- sulting room” which, moré often than not, is a cave up a mountainside. Yet even here modernity has intruded. Under the law as it today exists, the practice of most native medicine is forbidden. The various gov- ernments have seen too many horrors, human sacrifices, mutilations, murders of twins and other abuses recommended by the wizards to tolerate them. “Pretending to the posesssion of supernatural powers,” “selling charms for invisibility” or “smelling-out as a wizard” are among the ccm- monest charges in the court houses of colonial villages or under “tree of justice,” where the white officials in the bush administer the law. FOR the purpose of fighting for the rights of the jungle medico in his numerous varieties, the prircipal of trade unionism has lately come int- use! On'y a short time ago the “Transvaal Ding- akas Association,” with which are associated 5imi!§.r bodies in other parts of South Africa, held its first convention at the City of Johan- nesbu:g Never in history has there bcen a imore curi- ous assembly than that of the several hundred black men and women (the right of the woman doctor to practice was acknowledged in the African kraals a thousand years before it was done in America and Europe) who lately fore- gathered in a hall, there to discuss the prob- lems and methcds of the profession of juju. Ol4 gray-wooled fellows, whose sole garment is a red or a yellow blanket; fat, sleek good- wives in purple headcloth and a caricature of Paris frock, bought at some trading store; young, aggressively smiling apprentices to the trade; hawkers of charms, profsssicn=l “rzin- makers” from the country and a of other types were represented in the crovd that squat- ted on the floor, debating with all the punctili- ous ceremonial of the tribal meeting place how the Government might be induced to extend more tolerance to folk who are often the only medical advisers for millions of blacks. Unlike the continents, Africa has too few irained doctors. There are enough (sometimes more than enough) in most towns, but out in the backveldt there is a shortage running into thousands. In the Union of South Africa alone, the British dominion at the Cape, which is further developed than any~ other area, the government lately announced that at least 1,500 additional medical men are need-d. So the Dingakas Union was not merely talk- ing nonsense when it resolved that the knowl- edge of its members was a valuable asset which even the white people need not despise and called upon the government to issue licenses to the wizards as it did to their rivals frem the universities. On the last occasion, however, another point cropped up. “The White People, my brothers and sisters,” said an isanusi from Zululand, “are trying to learn our own witchcraft. They have sent men to collect our knowledge. When they know everything they can do without us and will for- bid our work even more strictly than now. So we must not tell them a word of what we know.” “Hauw! Hauw!” applauded the conference, and all the members pledged themselves to lend no aid to the wicked efforts of the Euro- peans. -world. NFORTUNATELY, the Dingakas Conference did not understand the purpose of the white folks’ inquisitiveness, and the learned professors have not yet succeeded in making it clear to the sorcerers that they are not potential competitcrs of theirs. What. then, is the real object behind these researches? For the last six years one of the largest institutions of learning on the African Conti- nent, the University of the Witwatersrand at Johannesburg, has systematically gathered and tested all the medical wisdom of the kraals. Situated in the world's greatest gold-mining city, to which hundreds of thousands of na- tives from the uttermost cormers of Africa annually come to work, this university has unique opportunities of seeing every kind of tribal custom, of tracking down every kind of medicine man and of collecting samples of innumerable remedies. American encouragement was in a consider- able degree responsible for the tackling of this unique adventure. Officials at the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D. C., and medical experts in the United States drew the attention of the scientists at Johannesburg to the fact that they might establish a clearing house for the juju lore for this part of the globe, a job which could be undertaken nowhere else. And so it ccmes that today Americans buy pills and other preparations at their drug stores against kidney troubles, against dia- betes, dysentery and malaria which were first STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, MARCH 6, 1932. “In studying the black pharmacopeia,” he remarked, “it is necessary to distinguish be- tween thos2 native medicires which are purely ‘magical’ and those which are real specifics for diseases. “Lightning, for instance, is hardly consid- ered by us as an ailment against which you can get a herb or a doctor’s prescription. Yet the black people have various ccncoctions which are prepared whenever it is thought that the crops are in danger. So, too, there are medicines against® hail, against the ‘evil eye,’ against curses on the sites of buildings. Such articles are witchcraft, pure and simple. We collect them with the others, but our Here we have a witch doctor of the African jungle dressed in all his finery. tried out before the dawn of history in the kraals of Africa. Prof. J. M. Watt, who occupies the chair of pharmacology at the University of the Wit- watersrand, is the man responsible for the collection of approximately 3,000 tribal rem- edies, which would otherwise never have be- come obtainable for the laboratories of the Of these about 1,200 are cures for various ailments, 500 are poisons and the re- mainder are as yet unspecified. I visited the professor, a wide-awake, jovial Scotchman, in one of the big buildings of the University Medical School. interest therein is not as great as in those which -profess to cure ills cf the flesh.” EVER was a more curious and difficult piece of work undertaken than the collection of the actual specimens. Through various scientific bodies, through the newspapers and through government de- partments, not only in this dominion but in a dozen neighboring territories, all good citizens, black’ as well as white, were invited to send in any native remedies of which they had knowl- edge. Queer customs having to do with dis- pensation of justice as well as cure for ills are followed in Africa. Pictured here is a trial scene in which the des fendant is kneeling before two witch doctors who are holding a stick. If tRe gtick bends during the ordeal, the de- fendant is considered guilty of the offense charged. Settiers on the Rhodesian veldt, Roman Catholic padres in the bush country of Zuzu land, traders in some lonely station amid the jungies of Mozambique, sun-helmeted native commissioners administering huge districts of Kenya, Uganda and other tropic regions, mis- sionaries in Bechuanaland, in Swaziland, in Angola, and a score of other outlandish regions took note of Prof. Watt's appeal. All Africa south of the Equator gave a hand. In cigarette tins, in oil cans, in packing cases and wrapping paper, in gourds and frayed animal hides the consignments began to reach the University of the Witwatersrand, They have kept on coming, sometimes briskiy, sometimes slackening off, for more than six years and the end is not remotely in sight. What a queer collection of articles these containers brought! Desiring to make their knowledge as com- plete as pcssible, the experts prepared a ques- tionnaire which was distributed in hundreds to the farthest frontiers of African settlement. They asked for the exact name of every rem- edy in the Bantu languages, the diseases for which it is applied, the methods for admin- Istering it. Lion's fat, a very expensive and popular drug with the natives; snake’s skin, worn &s a bandage against rheumatism; antelope horns, chopped up fine; the powdered skulls of tor- toises; the roots of certain lilies, the skin of an anteater, different kinds of clay, pieces of raw asbestos, the bones of vultures, the bark of innumerable kinds of trees, hedgehogs’ quills, seeds which are burned so that the smoke can be inhaled, grasses that are added to hot baths—even Macbeth’s witches did not put more surprising oddments into their cele- brated stewpot than are carefully stored in the steel cupboards of the department of phar- macology. Every cne is carefully card-indexed, and in the course of time every one is tested out as regards its efficacy. 11\O the natives themselves give any help?” I asked the professor. “Only in comparatively few cases. The chiefs of the different tribes are either too lazy or too superstitious to encourage their subjects to disclose what they know to the white people, The ngakas, or native doctors, are hostile as a body because they believe we are going to compete with them. But from time to time we strike a Bantu who understands that mod- ern research work is for the good of every one, and then we reap a harvest that makes up for much.” 5 Mention was made of one old kraal wizard, quite uneducated by European standards, who had what may justly be called the scientific mind. This gray-wooled sage has supplied more than 40 hitherto unknown native reme- dies to the scientists. Other valuable knowledge is gathered from traveling herbalists, who wander across the veldt with their packages of mysterious drugs, and from the queer little shops in the by- streets of the African cities, where the m from the kraal buy their traditional remeds such as decoctions from elephant’s hair or a jelly from a crocodile’s hide or hyena's teeth or dried insects of various kinds. . (Copyright, 1932.)