When the Indian physicians visit their supposed irreligious patients, they approach them in a bending posture, with their rattling calabash,[74] preferring that sort to the North-American gourds: and in that bent posture of body, they run two or three times round the sick person, contrary to the course of the sun, invoking God as already exprest. Then they invoke the raven, and mimic his croaking voice: Now this bird was an ill omen to the ancient heathens, as we may see by the prophet Isaiah; so that common wisdom, or self-love, would not have directed them to such a choice, if their traditions had represented it as a bad symbol. But they chose it as an emblem of recovery, probably from its indefatigableness in flying to and fro when sent out of the ark, till he {173} found dry ground to rest on[XLIII]. They also place a bason of cold water with some pebbles in it on the ground, near the patient, then they invoke the fish, because of its cold element, to cool the heat of the fever. Again, they invoke the eagle[75] (_Ooóle_) they solicit him as he soars in the heavens, to bring down refreshing things for their sick, and not to delay them, as he can dart down upon the wing, quick as a flash of lightning. They are so tedious on this subject, that it would be a task to repeat it: however, it may be needful to observe, that they chuse the eagle because of its supposed communicative virtues; and that it is according to its Indian name, a cherubimical emblem, and the king of birds, of prodigious strength, swiftness of wing, majestic stature, and loving its young ones so tenderly, as to carry them on its back, and teach them to fly. Footnote XLIII: The ancients drew bad presages from the situation, and croaking of ravens and crows. They looked on that place as unhappy, where either of them had croaked in the morning. Hesiod forbids to leave a house unfinished, lest a crow should chance to come and croak when sitting on it. And most of the illiterate peasants in Europe are tinctured with the like superstition, pretending to draw ill omens from its voice. Josephus tells us, that Solomon had a divine power conferred upon him, of driving evil spirits out of possessed persons—that he invented several incantations by which diseases were cured—and left behind him such a sure method of exorcising, as the dæmons never returned again: and he assures us, the Jews followed the like custom as late as his own time; and that he saw such a cure performed by one Eleazar. They likewise imagined, that the liver of a fish would keep away evil spirits, as one of the apocryphal writers acquaints us[XLIV]. {174} Footnote XLIV: