The Eboes and Kalabeese of Western Africa hold very curious notions respecting the administering of doctor’s drugs. When they bury their dead the sorrowing friends place a tube in the earth communicating with the body of the deceased, and down this tube they, in after times, pour palm wine and other liquids for the sustenance of the soul of the departed, and even medicines, which libations they imagine will produce the same effect upon the offerer as though absorbed by himself. Thus an Eboe will come to a surgeon, “Doctor, me sickee;” and when given the proper medicine, that official must watch the applicant take the dose on the spot, or he will administer it to the shade of his father, making the parental benefits to continue even after death; but strange to say, if given a bottle of rum he becomes suddenly oblivious of his father’s grave, and forgetting that the ashes of the departed may probably appreciate rum as much as palm wine and that the paternal clay may likewise require to be moistened, pours it down his own thorax with the most lively gestures expressive of satisfaction. A person styled an Abiadiong, or sorcerer, is always consulted in cases of sickness, death, or capital crime, to find out the individual who has brought the malady on his neighbour. He is reputed to derive his knowledge by education, but is not the bearer of a diploma, save one in his title. The Abiadiong squats himself beside the sick man--repeats a number of incantations--tosses strings of beads he has in his hand as an appeal to the spirit he invokes--rubs the beads alternately on his own body and that of the sick man--cogitates and decides. Sometimes the decision is settled by a little copper Palarer beforehand; and, as the Eboe law gives to the possessor of its privileges an unlimited power in this respect, it may be imagined what scenes of blood the system creates and fosters. Alia-lok is the title which, in this country, is given to a doctor of medicine; but the Kalabeese have little faith in drugs, and surgical operations are generally performed by the soft sex. These are confined to two species of cupping--the dry and the bloody--and to enema administering. The dry cupping is effected with a pyreform-calabash upon the breasts of women, whose bodies are chalked over at the same time, to force them to maturity. Razors are used as scarificators in moist cupping the side and temples of persons labouring under, what they suppose to be, congestive diseases. Ulcers are usually dressed by a piece of leaf passed round the diseased part, and fastened by a bamboo stem. A poison bean, with a string through a hole bored in it, is frequently worn as a curative ju-ju round a sore leg--only a modification of the _similia similibus curantur_ system. Perhaps it is to carry out a like idea that dogs are buried in the ground with their heads above the ground, where the poor creatures spend three or four days before nature conquers their power of life,