Although regarded with extreme skepticism by many, the uncanny healing power of the witch doctors (M'ganga) of Africa are widely treated with respect by the medical profession. A witchdoctor in Dakar, Senegal was once able to save the lives of many yellow fever patients doomed to die where medical graduates from Paris stood by helplessly.

Once too, along the banks of the Congo River, a French doctor observed African surgery being performed. His friends were treating a man with a very deep cut in the forearm. They secured a number of large black ants over the wound. As each ant bit into the flesh, the cut was drawn together. The body of each ant was removed and the wound closed as neatly as though done by a surgeon's needle.

During the smallpox epidemics of the eighteenth century in Southern Africa, there were no Bushman fatalities. They knew how to build immunity to certain diseases and poisons. Bushmen used to demonstrate this by for instance placing a tarantula spider on their hands, allowing themselves to be bitten and yet showing no trace of suffering afterwards.

A Bushman's consumption of food and water has astounded doctors. A Bushman swells visibly as he consumes a small buck. And yet he will be able to compete quite comfortably in a marathon in that state. They will overtake a buck in the desert heat or chase a zebra for several kilometers with hardly any rest.

It is claimed that the Bushmen has a sixth sense. They have a very highly developed and uncanny sense of direction, far superior to an European or African. A Bushman may turn, circle and zigzag for hours when hunting, but when returning to camp he will head exactly in the right direction.

A tribesman was teted by blindfolding and leading him through various paths for several hours. When the cloth was removed, he pointed to the exact direction of his camp. Children too, never lose their way. Together with this "guiding instinct", they apparently see a vision of the trail ahead.

At one stage during the previous century old people were no longer wanted and accepted in their communities.When a person became too old to take part in the daily tasks of the village, they were led into the forests and left to be killed by the wild beasts. Many did not care to wait for this ordeal and simply started to fade away. This power to die at will is a fact that science simply cannot explain.

Hypnotism has been practiced by African witch doctors for many centuries. The kind of hypnotist we're familiar with claims that he/she cannot make a person behave, while hypnotized, in a manner in which he would not normally behave. But in Africa, hypnotism is regarded as a strong and evil force.

The South African Police have recorded one such remarkable story. Two young native girls arrived at the Police station in the Northern Transvaal and confessed to have murdered and eaten the eldest wife of their husband, the chief. The police surgeon suspected hypnotism and suggested taking additional statements from them at frequent intervals. This clever plan indeed revealed that as the days passed the girls remembered less and less of the crime until eventually they denied any knowledge of it.

In actual fact no crime had been admitted at all. The chief's wife had died of ordinary illness. The suspicious chief, however had asked his witch-doctor to "smell out" the person responsible for her death.

These women had been selected by the witchdoctor, hypnotized, and told to report to the police.