These people are remarkably healthful, and live to a very advanced age, having quite a youthful appearance for their years.[134] They have scarcely any disease but the colic, their remedy for which is friction, a person rubbing the bowels of the sick violently, until the pain has subsided, while the conjurer, or holy man, is employed, in the meantime, in making his gestures, singing, and repeating certain words, and blowing off the evil spirit, when the patient is wrapped up in a bearskin, in order to produce perspiration. Their cure for the rheumatism, or similar pains, which I saw applied by Maquina in the case of Thompson, to whom it gave relief, is by cutting or scarifying the part affected. In dressing wounds, they simply wash them with salt water, and bind them up with a strip of cloth, or the bark of a tree. They are, however, very expert and successful in the cure of fractured or dislocated limbs, reducing them very dexterously, and, after binding them up with bark, supporting them with blocks of wood, so as to preserve their position.[135] During the whole time I was among them, but five natural deaths occurred, Tootoosch and his two infant children, an infant son of Maquina, and the slave whom I have mentioned, a circumstance not a little remarkable in a population of about fifteen hundred; and as respects child-birth, so light do they make of it, that I have seen their women, the day after, employed as usual, as if little or nothing had happened. The Nootkians in their conduct towards each other are in general pacific and inoffensive, and appear by no means an ill-tempered race, for I do not recollect any instance of a violent quarrel between any of the men, or the men and their wives, while I was with them, that of Yealthlower excepted. But when they are in the least offended, they appear to be in the most violent rage, acting like so many maniacs, foaming at the mouth, kicking and spitting most furiously; but this is rather a fashion with them than a demonstration of malignity, as in their public speeches they use the same violence, and he is esteemed the greatest orator who bawls the loudest, stamps, tosses himself about, foams, and spits the most.[136] In speaking of their regulations, I have omitted mentioning that, on attaining the age of seventeen, the eldest son of a chief is considered as a chief himself, and that whenever the father makes a present, it is always done in the name of his eldest son, or, if he has none, in that of his daughter. The chiefs frequently purchase their wives at the age of eight or ten, to prevent their being engaged by others, though they do not take them from their parents until they are sixteen.