The largest Indian tribes in Patagonia, the Moluches and the Puelches, have male and female sorcerers. Boys who suffer from epileptic fits, or from the St. Vitus's dance, are selected for this office, and are brought up in it. They have to adopt female apparel, which they continue to wear when grown up. These men, dressed like women, are supposed to have been destined for their profession by the demons themselves. They, likewise, assume the power of curing disease by means of incantations accompanied with the noise of rattles and drums.[51] The close resemblance of certain practices of the medicine-men among uncivilized nations in different parts of the globe, is especially suggestive. Nor are the differences without interest. Turning to Africa, we have musical-medical practitioners with the Negroes and Kafirs, whose art must have originated quite independently of that of the American medicine-men. The Negroes in Jamaica have sorcerers and physicians, called Obeah-men, whose ceremonies are probably of African origin, although they are in many respects similar to those of the Indian medicine-men. The Obeah-men, being well acquainted with the peculiar effects of the different poisonous plants, it is said, often make bad use of their knowledge.[52] When attending a sick person, the Obeah-man generally commences his cure with a dance, and he administers a powder, or a liquor, to his victim.[53] The Negroes in Western Africa have professional musicians or minstrels, called in Senegambia, _Griots_; singing men, or bards, called _Jillikea_; Fetish priests who drum and dance as if they themselves were possessed of evil spirits; Priestesses of the Serpent worship, which has its principal temples in Whydah; Rain-makers; Wizards, called _Greegree-men_; and other "wise men," who are also physicians and musicians. The _Ganga_, in Loango, South Western Africa, are, according to the Abbe Proyard, priests as well as physicians: "When they come to a patient, they ask him where his ailment lies. They blow on the part affected: after that, they make fomentations, and tie up his limbs in different places with bandages. These are the preliminaries used in all diseases. They know nothing either of phlebotomy, or of medicine.... They know a very salutary remedy, in their opinion, for all diseases; but this they only employ in favour of those who can afford the expense. When they are called in to a rich man, they take with them all the performers on musical instruments they can find in the country. They all enter in silence; but, at the first signal which they give, the musical troop begin their performance. Some are furnished with stringed instruments, others beat on the trunks of hollow trees covered with skin,--a sort of tabor. All of them uniting their voices with the sound of the instruments round the patient's bed, make a terrible uproar and din, which is often continued for several days and nights in succession."[54]