University of Virginia Library

AFTER TREATMENT.

The treatment resorted to after delivery is not alike among all tribes. Some, with whom I have come in contact, require the puerpera to keep up on her feet during the greater part of the day—taking short walks about the camp, resting when weariness becomes oppressive; while walking she uses a staff, for the double purpose of support while upon her feet, and also as an instrument of relief; as she slowly steps about the body is frequently bent forward,

bringing the abdominal walls immediately over the uterus against the upper end of the staff, while the hand of the woman is upon the end of the stick in the same way as that of a man walking with a cane.

This practice is kept up for a period of three or four days, when the puerpera is thought to be well; the prescribed walks varying with periods of rest upon her couch.

The object—as I am informed by the old women of the tribe—is to facilitate the flow of the lochia.

They know that a certain amount of blood should escape, and think that if the patient should lie down in bed this would accumulate in the abdominal cavity, and cause death. From all I can learn, by inquiries of those of the tribes who are old enough to remember the practice among the Indians in this region before the time that the white man came among them, this procedure in the after-treatment was solely for the purpose of encouraging a free flow of the lochia, and I further learn that no case of death from hemorrhage had then been known to occur.

Some of the Indian tribes in this country follow a different course of after-treatment.

As soon as possible after delivery the puerpera is placed on a bed on the floor of the lodge, and securely wrapped in blankets, or whatever kind of covering they have. The bed is placed near the fire, if the weather is cool, and she is kept in this closely wrapped condition. When asking for an explanation of this method of treating their lying-in women, I was told that it was to keep the patient from taking cold, and having fever (somewhat like the Siamese). In this condition she is kept for the period of four or five days, except such times as she is compelled to attend the calls of nature. When freed from this restriction, she at once resumes the care of the babe as well as the duties naturally falling to the lot of an Indian squaw.

During the period that I was living among these Indians —two and one-half years—I neither saw or heard of a case of puerperal fever, eclampsia, or any other diseases peculiar to the lying-in woman. Neither did a death during

confinement come under my immediate observation, and but few Indian women have any mammary trouble after their confinement, notwithstanding the fact that they are exposed to the same cause that is a prolific source of such complications among whites.