firing guns at it as it is supposed to be escaping.[1] Such processes were in full vogue in the West Indies in the time of Columbus, when Friar Roman Pane put on record his quaint account of the native sorcerer pulling the disease off the patient's legs (as one pulls off a pair of trousers), going out of doors to blow it away, and bidding it begone to the mountain or the sea; the performance concluding with the regular sucking-cure and the pretended extraction of some stone or bit of flesh, or .such thing, which the patient is assured that his patron-spirit or deity (cemi) put into him to cause the disease, in punishment for neglect to build him a temple or honour him with prayer or offerings of goods.[2] Patagonians considered sickness as caused by a spirit entering the patient's body; 'they believe every sick person to be possessed of an evil demon; hence their physicians always carry a drum with figures of devils painted on it, which they strike at the beds of sick persons to drive out from the body the evil demon which causes the disorder.'[3] In Africa, according to the philosophy of the Basutos and the Zulus, the causes of disease are the ghosts of the dead, come to draw the living to themselves, or to compel them to sacrifice meat-offerings. They are recognized by the diviners, or by the patient himself, who sees in dreams the departed spirit come to torment him. Congo tribes in like manner consider the souls of the dead, passed into the ranks of powerful spirits, to cause disease and death among mankind. Thus, in both these districts, medicine becomes an almost entirely religious matter of propitiatory sacrifice and prayer addressed to the disease-inflicting manes. The
- ↑ Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part i. p. 250, part ii. pp. 179, 199, part iii. p. 498; M. Eastman, 'Dahcotah,' pp. xxiii. 34, 41, 72. See also Gregg, 'Commerce of Prairies,' vol. ii. p. 297 (Comanches); Morgan, 'Iroquois,' p. 163; Sproat, p. 174 (Ahts); Egede, 'Greenland,' p. 186; Cranz, p. 269.
- ↑ Roman Pane, xix. in 'Life of Colon'; in Pinkerton, vol. xii. p. 87.
- ↑ D'Orbigny, 'L'Homme Américain,' vol. ii. pp. 73, 168; Musters, 'Patagonians,' p. 180. Se also J. G. Müller, pp. 207, 231 (Caribs); Spix and Martius, 'Brasilien,' vol. i. p. 70; Martius, 'Ethnog. Amer.' vol. i. p. 646 (Marcusis).
