If a patient be under the hands of an angekkok, he must live by rule, which they are accustomed to observe so exactly, that even when we have assisted many of them with our medicaments, they have always demanded what sort of diet they were to keep. Women in childbed are to abstain from working, and from certain victuals, viz. flesh meat, which their own husbands have not taken, or that of a deer, whose entrails are not sound, but damaged. The first week after the delivery they eat nothing but fish, afterwards they are allowed meat. The bones they pick in this state must not be carried out of doors. After the first childbed, a woman is not allowed to eat of the head or liver. They must not eat in the open air. During their lying-in they have their water pails for themselves alone; if any unwittingly should drink of this water, the rest must be thrown away. Their husbands must forbear working for some weeks, neither must they drive any trade during that time: likewise if any body be sick, they do not care to meddle with any trade. They are not allowed to eat or drink bareheaded. They pull off one of their boots, and lay it under the bowl which they eat out of, to the end (as they imagine) that the infant, being a male, may become a good seal catcher. During the infancy of the child, they dare not boil any thing over the lamp, nor let any strangers light a fire with them; and many more fooleries to be observed[39]. It is customary among them for married women to wash and cleanse themselves after their months, that their husbands may not catch a distemper and die. Likewise, if they have happened to touch a dead corpse, they immediately cast away the clothes they have then on; and for this reason they always put on their old clothes when they go to a burying, in which they agree with the Jews, as in many other usages and ceremonies; for example, to bewail the loss of their virginity; to mark themselves upon their skin; to cut their hairs round the head, which the Lord forbids the Jews to do, Levit. xix. When I consider this and many other of their customs, which seem to be of a Jewish extraction, I am not far from acceding to the opinion of a certain famous writer, concerning the Americans; among whom as he found sundry Jewish rites and ceremonies, he took them to descend from Jews, or rather from some of the ten tribes of Israel, who were led into the Assyrian captivity, and afterwards dispersed into unknown countries.--See hereon Espars, 1. iv.