The operation of cutting for the stone, like many other of the most difficult operations of surgery, was for a long time given over to ignorant persons who make a speciality of it. Sprengel attributes this injurious custom to the ridiculous pride of the properly instructed doctors, who disdained to undertake operations which could be successfully performed by laymen.[94] The Bafiotes, on the coast of South Guinea, practise cupping. They make incisions in the skin, and place horns over the wounds, and then suck out the air, withdrawing the blood by these means.[95] “Felkin saw a case of the Cæsarean operation in Central Africa performed by a man. At one stroke an incision was made through both the abdominal walls and the uterus; the opening in the latter organ was then enlarged, the hæmorrhage checked by the actual cautery, and the child removed. While an assistant compressed the abdomen, the operator then removed the placenta. The bleeding from the abdominal walls was then checked. No sutures were placed in the walls of the uterus, but the abdominal parietes were fastened together by seven figure-of-eight sutures, formed with polished iron needles and threads of bark. The wound was then dressed with a paste prepared from various roots, the woman placed quietly upon her abdomen, in order to favour perfect drainage, and the task of this African Spencer Wells was finished. It appears that the patient was first rendered half unconscious by banana wine. One hour after the operation the patient was doing well, and her temperature never rose above 101° F., nor her pulse above 108. On the eleventh day the wound was completely healed, and the woman apparently as well as usual.”[96] The South Sea Islanders perform trepanning, and some Australian tribes perform ovariotomy.[97] The missionary d’Entrecolles was the first to inform the Western world of the method of inoculation for the small-pox, which the Chinese have followed for many centuries.[98] In many countries, and from the earliest times, says Sprengel,[99] it has been customary to inoculate children with small-pox, because experience has shown that a disease thus provoked assumes a milder and more benign form than the disease which comes naturally. CHAPTER VII. UNIVERSALITY OF THE USE OF INTOXICANTS. Egyptian Beer and Brandy.—Mexican Pulque.—Plant-worship.—Union with the Godhead by Alcohol.—Soma.—The Cow-religion.—Caxiri.—Murwa Beer.—Bacchic Rites.—Spiritual Exaltation by Wine.