Doubtful Cases.

Attention has been drawn to the necessity of correct diagnosis to enable efficacious treatment to be carried out. However even in primitive medicine there seems to have difficulties in the way of diagnosis. Amongst the Ngati-Whatua tribe, when dreams and other methods of diagnosis had been exhausted without success, they had recourse to a peculiar method of treatment in the hope that they might be fortunate enough to cure the patient. The patient or a friend of his in the early morning passed some urine into the hollowed palm of the hand. The hand must not have touched food that morning. The urine was painted on the afflicted part or in some cases drunk. My informant was careful to inform me that this proceedure was "kaia", theft, an attempt to steal success and good fortune.