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oiflKECHTa] THE SWIMMER MANUSCRIPT 53
Although Cherokee possesses words to express siieh concepts as
"herbs (in general) " or that refer to certain definite families of plants
("families" to betaken here from the Cherokee point of view, as
"those that grow in the mountains," "those that arc ever green,"
" those that grow near the river," etc.), these are but rarely heard, and
as a rule the specific names of the plant are used.
Although some of the simples used are undeniably of officinal value,
this would seem in the majority of cases to be a mere matter of acci-
dent, rather than evidence of conscious experiment or even of fortunate
experience. The rule underlying the choice of a certain plant as an
antidote against a given ailment is of a mythological and an occult
rather than of a natural nature.
The chemical properties of the herbs, roots, barks, etc., used niay in
some cases happen to be appropriate to the result to be obtained, but
that this is merely a matter of coincidence and chance is proved by
many practices, a few of which are:
The outer appearance of the plants is of tremendous value in determining
their efficacy against certain given diseases, as, "a thimbleberry
shrub growing high up (in the cavity) of a hollow (tree) " is used
against "painful remembrance of the dead" (see p. 233), because the
medicine man said, "when we tear away the roots, deeply buried and
stubbornly clinging to the tree, we will, when we drink a decoction
of the roots, also be able to pull the remembrance out of our mind that
makes us sick."
Plants that have a pungent smell are great favorites in inany ail-
ments. The Cherokee have no explanation to offer. The same fact,
observed times without number elsewhere, has usually been explained,
"the pungent smell puts the disease demon to rout."
Trees and plants, the sap and. the juice of which are of a mucilaginous
nature, as that of Da-'"wodzf'la {Ulmusjulva Michx., "slippery elm")
are used in cases where something is to be ejected out of the body, as
in childbirth— "the inside is to be made slippery."
Plants that show certain peculiar characteristics, identical to those
shown by the disease, are used as antidote: the "milky discharge"
common to certain maladies of the urinary system is thought to be
efficaciousl}'" combated by administering plants that contain a milky
juice; as if, by showing to the ailment that there is plenty of the milky,
juicy matter at hand, there is hope of convincing it of the futility of
staying.
Or the contrary may be the case: Plants and fruits that contain
great quantities of juice must by no means be used by the patient when
he is suffering from a complaint, one of the symptoms of which is the
presence of a lot of "juicy matter," as in blisters, boils, etc.
Mooney in his notes has left us a typical illustration of this mode of
reasoning; against rheumatism ' 'the plants used in the preparation are