A few days later another interesting case came under treatment. I had noticed an anæmic-looking man accompanied by a woman loitering about the village in the morning, and later in the day saw the same man in earnest conversation with Gorgonio at the ruins; but as he did not come to speak to me, and as I knew he did not belong to Copan, I took him to be a traveller whose curiosity had prompted him to leave the road to see what we were doing at the ruins. However, when I returned to the village in the evening the same couple were still hanging about, and Gorgonio came with a mystified air to my hut and said: "Don Alfredo, it isn't true is it, that a man can have an animal inside him eating him up?" I expressed my doubts as to its probability, when he said: "That is what I have been telling the man who has been about here all day, but he says that he is quite certain that he has an animal inside him eating him up, and that a brujo (witch) put it there, and he knows who the brujo is, and he wants to ask you whether he should kill the brujo, and if he does so whether the animal will go away?" This was my first case of "brujeria," and the medical notes in 'Hints to Travellers' did not give any directions as to treatment, so I sent for the victim of witchcraft and got him to state the case himself. He was rather shy about it, but finally told me what I had already heard from Gorgonio, and I learnt further that the "brujo" was one of his neighbours living in the same village. Then I tried my best, with Gorgonio's assistance, to persuade the man that he was mistaken, that no brujo could possibly put an animal inside him to eat him up, that no doubt he was out of health, but that "brujeria" had nothing to do with it. We might just as well have talked to one of the stone monuments in the plaza with the hope of making an impression on it; both the man and his wife were fully convinced that their probably harmless neighbour was the cause and origin of the mischief, and their only doubt seemed to be whether his death would ensure the death of the animal. After fruitlessly arguing for an hour, I took Gorgonio aside, and we held a private consultation; then, with as much mystery and solemnity as we could assume, I presented my patient with my far-famed "anti-brujeria pills and powders," which looked very much like small doses of calomel and compound rhubarb pills, and were to be taken at stated intervals, at certain phases of the moon, in order to keep the animal quiet, while the patient tried by every means in his power to propitiate and live on good terms with the "brujo," as it was the well-known opinion of the faculty that if the patient killed the "brujo," the animal always killed the patient. I added that no fees were taken in cases of "brujeria," not even bundles of cigars or fresh eggs, and that the patient had better return to his village at once and carry out the treatment prescribed. The couple went off apparently fairly satisfied, and I heard no more of them, but I have some hope that the "brujo" escaped death.