The Guarany tongue is as rich as the Abiponian is poor in the names of wholesome plants, and not a few of the Guaranies are well acquainted with the use of them. In the town of St. Joachim I knew an Indian named Ignacio Yaricà, eight years an attendant upon the sick, whose dexterity and success I could not but admire. He would set a broken limb, and entirely heal it in a very short time by means of swathes of reeds and four little herbs. The woods of America also produce a kind of dark green ivy, which twines itself round the branches of trees, and is called by the Spaniards _suelda con suelda_. This plant cut small, boiled in water, and bound with linen on to the limb, soon and happily consolidates it. In the city of Corrientes, a Spanish matron was cured of a sprained foot, by merely wrapping it in the fresh skin of a puppy. The Abipones are totally ignorant of medicines for purging the bowels, causing perspiration, removing bile, and dispelling noxious humours. They will not even bear the mention of an enema. In the town of St. Jeronymo, a Spanish soldier who professed the art of medicine, being requested by Father Brigniel to attend upon a sick Abipon, declared the necessity of an injection. No sooner did the sick man feel the syringe applied to him, than he started furiously out of bed, snatched up a lance, and would have slain the soldier physician, had he not saved himself by hasty flight. Sudden terror giving way to rage, the old Spaniard, whilst we were laughing, poured forth a volley of curses on his ungrateful patient. "You had better call up a devil from hell, Fathers," said he, "to cure this beast. When I offered him medicine, the savage tried to kill me: he opposes a lance to a syringe. Who could contend with such unequal arms?" The Guaranies have the same repugnance to the use of the syringe. The Indians use snuff as a medicine, stuffing it into their ears, when they find them badly affected by the rain or wind. The jugglers vauntingly affirm, that they have it in their power to perform cures by words alone. Sitting on the sick man's bed they sing extemporary verses, as magical charms, either to reconcile the evil spirit, or to call up the shades of the dead by whose assistance they hope to remove all diseases. But away with this superstitious nonsense. The Abiponian physicians show how little they confide in their own arts, when, on being seized with a disorder, they neglect to consult their colleagues, and prefer the aid of any European who will prescribe for them. At the time that I dwelt amongst the Abipones, the most famous in the art of medicine was Pariekaikin, the chief of the jugglers, who, on being seized with pleurisy, called on me to heal him in preference to any of his colleagues. Calcined hartshorn, boiled in barley-water, restored him to health, and gained me the reputation of a physician amongst the Abipones. Nothing will procure you the good-will of the savages so soon as skill in the healing art.