The doctor is named I-so-kin-[)u]h-kin, a word difficult to translate.  The nearest English meaning of the word seems to be “heavy singer for the sick.”  As a rule all doctors sing while endeavoring to work their cures, and, as helpers, a number of women are always present.  Disease being caused by evil spirits, prayers, exhortations, and certain mysterious methods must be observed to rid the patient of their influence.  No two doctors have the same methods or songs.  Herbs are sometimes used, but not always.  One of their medicines is a great yellow fungus which grows on the pine trees.  This is dried and powdered, and administered either dry or in an infusion.  It is a purgative.  As a rule, these doctors, while practising their rites, will not allow any one in the lodge, except the immediate members of the sick man’s family.  Mr. Schultz, who on more than one occasion has been present at a doctoring, gives the following account of one of the performances.

“The patient was a man in the last stages of consumption.  When the doctor entered the lodge, he handed the sick man a strip of buckskin, and told him to tie it around his chest.  The patient then reclined on a couch, stripped to the waist, and the doctor kneeled on the floor beside him.  Having cleared a little space of the loose dirt and dust, the doctor took two coals from the fire, laid them in this place, and put a pinch of dried sweet grass on each of them.  As the smoke arose from the burning grass, he held his drum over it, turning it from side to side, and round and round.  This was supposed to purify it.  Laying aside the drum, he held his hands in the smoke, and rubbed his arms and body with it.  Then, picking up the drum, he began to tap it rapidly, and prayed, saying:  ’Listen, my dream.  This you told me should be done.  This you said should be the way.  You said it would cure the sick.  Help me now.  Do not lie to me.  Help me, Sun person.  Help me to cure this sick man.’

“He then began to sing, and as soon as the women had caught the air, he handed the drum to one of them to beat, and, still singing himself, took an eagle’s wing and dipped the tip of it in a cup of ‘medicine.’  It was a clear liquid, and looked as if it might be simply water.  Placing the tip of the wing in his mouth, he seemed to bite off the end of it, and, chewing it a little, spat it out on the patient’s breast.  Then, in time to the singing, he brushed it gently off, beginning at the throat and ending at the lower ribs.  This was repeated three times.  Next he took the bandage from the patient, dipped it in the cup of medicine, and, wringing it out, placed it on the sick man’s chest, and rubbed it up and down, and back and forth, after which he again brushed the breast with the eagle wing.  Finally, he lighted a pipe, and, placing the bowl in his mouth, blew the smoke through the stem all over the patient’s breast, shoulders, neck, and arms, and finished the ceremony by again brushing with the wing.  At intervals of two or three hours, the whole ceremony was repeated.  The doctor arrived at the lodge of the sick man about noon, and left the next morning, having received for his services a saddle and two blankets.”