When we speak of a head of cabbage, the trunk of a tree, or the legs
of a table, we understand that we have applied these names on the
basis of resemblances to objects to which the names more strictly
belong, and there is no thought that the name carries with it any
further connection; but when the Chinese doctor administers the
heads, middle parts, and roots of plants, for the heads, bodies,
and legs of his patients respectively, he is clearly led to do so by
a vague sense of analogical fitness, by a feeling that the bodily
similarities are indicative of further connection of a quasi-causal
type. This kind of reasoning abounds in primitive ceremonials, in
which the appropriateness of the observances and of the elements of
the ritual depend upon resemblances or symbolical suggestiveness.
It is difficult to find instances of this trait in which a more or
less conscious symbolism is excluded, for we know how readily the
savage mind, in its somewhat more developed stages, uses this mode of
thought, as is evidenced by the ingenuity of their picture-writing,
gesture-language, and tribal systems. But apart from symbolical
procedures, in which the unreality of the underlying resemblances
is half acknowledged, we may note the application of such general
principles as that unusual phenomena have unusual significance,
and that to accomplish important objects drastic means and rare
substances must be employed; that operations and remedies will be
effective according to their divergence from the usual and the common
experience of mankind. The influence of this principle is traceable
in the bizarre fancies and grotesque performances of savages, as also
in the reverence shown to the belongings of the white man and the
curious uses to which they are put. In their ritual observances, as
well as in medical practice, the same principle is involved; a single
illustration will suffice to recall this well-known form of thought.
Dorman cites the fate of an Indian warrior brought to camp after a
most disastrous encounter with a grizzly bear. To repair his very
serious injuries "the doctor compounded a medicine that really ought
to have worked wonders. It was made by boiling together a collection
of miscellaneous weeds, a handful of chewing tobacco, the heads of
four rattlesnakes, and a select assortment of worn-out moccasins. The
decoction thus obtained was seasoned with a little crude petroleum
and a large quantity of red pepper, and the patient was directed
to take a pint of the mixture every half hour. He was a brave man,
conspicuous for his fortitude under suffering, but after taking his
first dose he turned over and died with the utmost expedition."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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