The business of the witch-doctor, or the greegree man, is to eject the devil from his patient--by fair means or foul as soon as possible. Dispersed through various preceding chapters instances of the way in which the ejection is attempted have already been given; we have witnessed how the Indian medicine-man operated on the sick baby, and on the unlucky little girl who had a stitch in her side; how the Dayak doctor cheated the devil and laid a trap for, caught, and replaced his patient’s departing spirit of life; how the Patagonian quack attempted the cure of the Patagonian infant. The medical and surgical customs of many savage nations, however, remain yet to be noticed. Let us see how they till lately managed such things in Polynesia. A fractured limb they set without much trouble: applying splinters of bamboo cane to the sides, and binding it up till it was healed. A dislocation they usually succeeded in reducing, but the other parts of their surgical practice were marked by a rude promptness, temerity, and barbarism almost incredible. A man one day fell from a tree and dislocated some part of his neck. His companions, on perceiving it, instantly took him up; one of them placed his head between his own knees, and held it firmly, while the others, taking hold of his body, twisted the joint into its proper place. On another occasion, a number of young men in the district of Faro, were carrying large stones suspended from each end of a pole across their shoulders (their usual mode of carrying a burden); one of them so injured the vertebræ as to be almost unable to move; he had, as they expressed it, _fate te tua_, broken the back. His fellow-workmen laid him flat on his face on the grass, one grasped and pulled his shoulders, and the other his legs, while a third actually pressed with both knees his whole weight upon the back where the bones appeared displaced. On being asked what they were doing, they coolly replied that they were only straightening the man’s back, which had been broken in with carrying stones. The vertebræ appeared to be replaced, they bound a long girdle repeatedly round his body, led him home, and without any other treatment he was in a short time able to resume his employment. The operation of trepanning they sometimes attempted, and say they have practised with success. It is reported that there are persons living in the Island of Borabora, on whom it has been performed, or at least an operation very much resembling it: the bones of the skull having been fractured in battle, they have cleared away the skin and coverings, and, having removed the fractured piece of bone, have carefully fitted in a piece of cocoa-nut shell and replaced the covering and skin, on the healing of which the man has recovered. I never saw any individual who had undergone this operation, but from the concurrent testimony of the people I have no doubt they have performed it.