A difficulty, admitted by the missionary in judging of the morality of the use of a fetich charm, is the explanation offered by the natives, even by some professedly Christian, that the charm is of the nature of a "medicine," and, generally, actually has medicines in it. It is known to the native that civilized and Christian therapeutics recognize a great variety of medicinal articles, solid and liquid, and that they are employed in a variety of ways,--as lotions, ointments, and powders; and that some are drunk, some are rubbed into the skin, and some are worn on the body,--_e. g._, a sachet of sulphur in skin diseases, or of pungent essential oils to fend off insects,--and that certain herbs whose scent is attractive to fish are rubbed on the fisherman's hook. The missionary knows, too, that certain native medicinal plants are used, and with efficiency, in precisely these ways and with precisely these reasons as, at least in part, the ground for their use. Truth gains nothing by an indiscriminate denunciation of all native "medicine"; for the native knows by the personal experience of himself and his observation of others that a given "medicine" has helped or cured himself and others. His belief in this case is not a mere theory; it is actual fact. The missionary loses in the native's respect, and in the native's trust in his judgment or the value of his word, if he asserts unqualifiedly that "native medicine" is "foolishness," especially if, as was the case before the desirability of medical missionaries was as generally recognized by the church as it now is, the missionary was able to give him no substitute for the magic doctor. The native Christian's sense of justice was aggrieved at being disciplined for the use of a medicine in sickness, which experience told him had been of benefit and in place of which the missionary offered him no other.