“The Ki, as you know”—Frock always assumed his listener was as familiar with a subject as he was—“at one time used the bark of a certain bush as a headache remedy. Charrifère studied them in 1869 and noted their use of this bush in his field journals. When I showed up three quarters of a century later, they had stopped using the remedy. They believed instead that headaches were caused by sorcery.” He shifted in his wheelchair. “The accepted remedy was now for the kinfolk of the headache victim to identify the sorcerer and, naturally, go off and murder him. Of course, the kin of the dead
...more
