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O^brecIts] the swimmer MANUSCRIPT 125
Complications.—As far as the partus itself is concerned there are,
after all, only two kinds of complications known:
(1) The child is slow in coming.
(2) Its position in the womb prevents its delivery.
In the first case the woman's private parts are bathed with a warm
decoction of "wale'lu v'nadzi-loGf'sti (Impatiens biflora Walt.,
spotted touch-me-not), which is said to scare the child.
The best means to induce partus are those where the child is
"scared"; the plant just named is said to produce this result; in
other cases (cf. texts, Formula No. 70, p. 273) the child is enticed to
hurry as an old ugly grannie, or the terrible looking Flint, is said
to be approaching. This statement, it is thought, will make the
little fellow come scampering out.
Or again, the child is lured out of its mother by being promised
the very playthings it likes—bow and arrows for a boy; a sieve or a
loom for a girl.
Also an infusion of the simples as described on p. 119 may be ad-
ministered again; if all this does not help a medicine man is called in,
who will start "working" on the case. He may examine with the
beads, to see what will be the ultimate outcome; he may by the same
means find out that witchcraft is active against the woman and her
child, in which case "old tobacco" will be smoked or burned. (See
p. 31.) Or the formula calling upon the child to "jump down" may
be repeated. (See above.) In this case the child is actually given
a name—first a boy's name; then, if the ceremony is unsuccessful, a
girl's name—so as to have a more material and coercive way of
addressing it.
If a medicine man is attending to the case, and some decoction has to
be applied externally, he does so in a very peculiar way. As he is not
supposed to stand in front of the patient, whose garments are tucked
up, and who is held by one or two of the women attendants in the
slanting, semireclining position as described before, the medicine
man has to stand behind these women and blow the decoction through
a reed tube (see p. 58) so that the liquid descends on the stomach
and the abdomen of the parturient, after having described a curve
over her head.
This way of applying a medicine shows once more to what extent
symbolic and mythic concepts are used in Cherokee medicine. For
even if the simple used were of any therapeutic value, what result
could it have when applied in such an inefficacious manner, when
often more of the decoction is scattered on the attending women and
on the face, arms, and legs of the patient than on the part of her body
actually under treatment.
As for difficult parturition due to the inverted or otherwise abnormal
position of the foetus in the uterus, the Cherokee take a