The idea that sickness could be removed by transferring it to another person was found in Mexico as in many other parts of the world; in cases of fever the image of a dog would be made of maize dough, and placed on an aloe-leaf in a pathway, and it was believed that the first passer-by would remove the malady in his heel-bones. A remedy which was of almost universal application, and which was of real value, was the steam-bath. The patient was introduced into a small brick-built chamber which had a furnace constructed at one side. Between the furnace and the chamber was a slab of the volcanic stone called _tezontli_, upon which water was poured to produce steam. This building was called temazcalli in Mexico, but the treatment is not peculiar to this area, being found elsewhere in America also. According to Burgoa, among the Zapotec, persons who felt themselves incurably sick would ask to be shut up in a chamber in the holy city of Mitla reserved for the bodies of sacrificial victims and captains killed in war. Here they were left to perish, secure in the knowledge that their lot in the other world would be far superior to that in this. To the Mexicans, as to many primitive peoples, death was not an altogether abhorrent idea, being little more than an incident in the continuity between this life and the next. But the manner of death was more important, since it had a direct effect upon the fate of the soul. The most enviable lot was that of the warriors who died either in battle or in sacrifice; they were supposed to depart to the eastern paradise of the sun, where, assembled on a great plain, they greeted his rising by beating upon their shields, and escorted him on his journey to the zenith. Thence they descended to the earth in the form of humming-birds and other birds of bright plumage, and spent their time among the flowers. Women dying in war or childbirth were equally fortunate; as the counterpart of the warriors they went to the western paradise of the sun, and bore him in a litter of bright feathers from the zenith to the horizon, when they descended to earth in the form of moths.