By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-
The rulers of Ethiopia, as we saw last week, had long been interested
in foreign medicines, and foreign medical practice of all kinds. This
was, as we have already suggested, no less apparent in the eighteenth
century, at the time of the visit to the country of the famous Scottish
traveller James Bruce.
Smallpox Stricken Massawa
Bruce, whose claims of medical prowess must not, I fear, be taken too
literally, landed at the Red Sea port of Massawa in September 1769. The
port, he claims, was then gripped during a terrible epidemic of
smallpox.There were fears, he asserts, that “the living would not be
sufficient to bury the dead.” The “whole island,” he asserts, was
“filled with shrieks and lamentations both night and day.”
Anxious to leave the hot, and epidemic-stricken port, and to make his
way into the cooler, and supposedly more healthy, highlands of the
interior, he “suppressed” his “character of physician.” He did so, he
says, in fear that he would otherwise be “detained by reason of the
multitude of the sick.”
Adwa
Bruce, according to his own account (for his story is largely
uncorroborated by others) accordingly at once proceeded inland. He went
first to Adwa, the great, but still relatively new, Tegray market town.
There he claims to have “saved many lives’,” by a “new method” of
treating them.
The Royal Children at Gondar
From Adwa, our traveller proceeded to the then Ethiopian capital,
Gondar, where, he claims, the smallpox epidemic was also fiercely
raging. He says that, soon after his arrival in the city, he was
summoned by the ruling lady, Empress Mentewab, and her daughter Woizero
Aster. They did so, he claims, because several of the royal children
were suffering from the disease, and knowledge of his medical skill had
preceded him. At the palace, the situation, he says, was serious.
His medical advice, he declares, was that everyone suffering from the
epidemic should at once “remove from the palace.” He did so, he says,
in order to “give the part of the family that were yet well a chance of
escaping the disease. Wise as was this advice, he claims that it was not
followed, because one of Woizero Aster’s sons clamoured loudly against
leaving his young relatives. It was therefore decided that all the royal
children, and their friends, should remain together, and, as the
Scotsman puts it, “abide the issue all in the palace together.”
On taking medical control at the palace, Bruce claims that he called
the court’s Greek doctor, Abba Christophorus, and others, and told them
of his determination to be in full, and undivided, command of the
situation. “I professed my attention,” he says, “of doing my utmost,
although the disease was much more serious and fatal in this country
than in mine, but I insisted that one condition be granted to me, which
was, that no directions as to the regimen or management, even of the
most trifling kind, as they might think, should be suffered, without my
permission and superintendence, otherwise I washed my hands of the
consequence, which I told them would be fatal. They all assented to
this, and Armaxikos (a palace priest) declared those excommunicated that
broke this promise: and I saw that the more scrupulous and particular I
was, the more the confidence of the ladies increased.”
Bruce claims that he then “set the servants all to work,” and, describing his method of treating the epidemic, continues:
Opening All Doors and Windows
“I opened all the doors and windows, fumigating them with incense and
myrrh, in abundance, washed them with warm water and vinegar, and
adhered strictly to the rules which my worthy and skilful friend Doctor
Russell had given me at Aleppo.”
Bruce gives us a list of the royal children he claims to have had
entrusted to his care. They included three of Woizero Aster’s children:
Ato Konfu, her son by her first husband Qenyazmach Necho; a son by her
second husband Yemaryam Barya; and a baby by her third husband, the
redoubtable Ras Mika’el Sehul. Among those who fell ill, the Scotsman
says, was Aster’s sister Woizero Altash’s daughter Yewubdar; a daughter
of Qanyazmach Berru, the governor of Damot; and her mother, the daughter
of another important courtier Qanyazmach Eshete. All his patients, he
says, survived, with the exception of Qanyazmach Berru’s daughter, whose
mother was also “a long time ill.” Yewubdar and Yemaryam Barya’s son
both recovered, but were “very much marked” by the disease.
Bruce claims that his medical services at the Gondar palace won him
considerable influence at court, and was the cause of the “remarkable
attention and favour” he claims to have received from the ruling family
at Gondar.
The Scotsman’s above quoted account is, however, far from medically
satisfactory. It gives us no real information on the extent of the
epidemic outside the palace at Gondar, let alone in the country as a
whole.
Bruce’s Other Treatment
Bruce has left a brief description of another of his methods of
treatment. He was on one occasion, he says, called upon to treat a
nobleman, whom he thought to be suffering from what he terms cancer of
the lip. He recommended the use of hemlock, and relates:
“I had been advised by my some of my medical friends to carry along
with me a preparation of hemlock, or circuta, recommended by Dr Stork, a
physician at Vienna. A considerable quantity had been sent to me from
France by commission, with directions how to use it. To keep on the safe
side I prescribed small doses…, being more anxious to preserve myself
from reproach than warmly solicitous about the cure of my patient. I
gave him positive advice to avoid eating raw meat, to keep to a milk
diet, and to drink plentifully of whey when he used this medicine.”
The Early 19th Swiss Missionary Samuel Gobat
A number of early nineteenth century European foreign travellers also
acquired considerable reputations for their medical skills, justified
or unjustified. The Swiss Protestant missionary Samuel Gobat treated
Woizero Walata Teklit, whom he describes as the “first lady” in Gondar,
in 1830. She later asked him to look after her brother, who had
apparently “gone mad,” and had failed to respond to the prayers of the
local priests. Gobat, following what was then the medical fashion in
Europe, decided to bleed him. “I took from him,” the Swiss reports,
“three or four pounds of blood; and when he was at the point of
fainting, I made him lie down on the bed, recommending the people to let
him rest”. Very sensible too, you may think!
The treatment was apparently successful, for, on the following
day,Woizero Teklit called on Gobat, and declared: “I have sent to you to
testify to my gratitude for the good you have done to my brother. Since
you saw him yesterday, he is as reasonable, in what he says to me, as
if he had never lost his sense.”
Gobat, who never escaped an opportunity to discredit the country’s
Orthodox clergy , replied to the good lady: “I think the quantity of
blood was the cause of his malady; but I assure you that I did not bleed
him without asking God that he would cause you to see that the word of
the priests is not always the truth”.
“The More I Tell them I am not a Physician.”
Gobat’s success was so great that he was soon besieged by crowds of
prospective patients. “I can hardly get to the city any more,” he wrote.
“Everybody stops me, begging me to go and heal the sick. The more I
tell them I am not a physician, the more they are persuaded that what I
advise is the best remedy. There are some persons who believe that it is
sufficient for me to look on the sick to effect a cure.”
As a result he soon had a continuous flow of visitors. Later in his
diary he notes,”Today I had to deal only with sick people,” and, on the
following day, he added, “I had hardly risen this morning, when suddenly
my house was full of people, priests, monks and others.” Later diary
entries tell a similar story. One recalls, “I passed the forenoon in
visiting the sick,” while another declares, “From sun-rise, till ten
o’clock, my house was full of people.”
The Saint Simonians, Combes and Tamisier
The French Saint Simonian missionaries Edmonde Combes and Maurice
Tamisier also testify to the extent of popular Ethiopian interest in
European medicine. Describing their travels in the Gondar area, they
write:
Impotent Men and Sterile Women
“Everyone was convinced that in our capacity as Whites we must be
profoundly versed in the study of medical sciences… each person is
anxious to come and see us, to ask us for remedies or amulets with the
conviction that we could assure the cure of the ill with which they are
afflicted… Impotent men appealed to us to give them aphrodisiacs, and
sterile women thought that we could procure for them the means of
becoming fertile. A priest came to present to us his son who was
afflicted with a disease considered in Europe as incurable.”
Belief in foreign medicine was, Combes and Tamisier suggest, often
little more than a superstition. Travelling in the Danqaz countryside,
they thus relate:
“The villagers begged us, with the most lively insistence, to make
them an amulet to preserve them from the terrible storms which ruined
them, and we feared for a moment that we would be held by force if we
refused to subscribe to their wish. `We know’, they said to us,” that a
White man enters into direct communication with the Heavenly Bodies and
spirits, and that he can, by his own power, drive away the hail and
illnesses of the country which he protects; remain therefore in our
midst the time that is necessary for this beneficiant work: we will
treat you like princes, you will lack nothing, and, when you leave. we
will pray for you so that God will bestow his favours on you’.”
Source: http://www.linkethiopia.org
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