_Wingo_ is a superstition which some Australian tribes have, that with a rope of fibre they can partially choke a man, by putting it round his neck at night while he is asleep, without waking him; his enemy then removes his caul-fat from under his short rib, leaving no mark or wound. When the victim awakes he feels no pain or weakness, but sooner or later he feels something break in his inside like a string. He then goes home and dies at once.[38] Dr. Watson thus describes the typical medicine-men:— “The Tla-guill-augh, or man of supernatural gifts, is supposed to be capable of throwing his good or bad medicine, without regard to distance, on whom he will, and to kill or cure by magic at his pleasure. These medicine-men are generally beyond the meridian of life; grave, sedate, and shy, with a certain air of cunning, but possessing some skill in the use of herbs and roots, and in the management of injuries and external diseases. The people at large stand in great awe of them, and consult them on every affair of importance.”[39] Dr. O. L. Möller, Medical Director-General of the Danish army, describes a certain wise woman near Lögstör, who used in her prescriptions for the sick people who consulted her a charm of willow twigs tied together amongst other mystic things, and whose therapeutics were of a bloodthirsty character, as she would advise her patients to strike the first person they met after returning home, until they drew blood, for that person would be the cause of the disease.[40] The fact that ghosts and demons are everywhere believed to cause diseases, and that sorcery is practised more or less by most of the races of man in connection with the causation or cure of disease, has been used as a factor in the argument for the origin of primitive man from a single pair in accordance with the orthodox belief. Dr. Pickering, the ethnologist, says: “Superstitions also appear to be subject to the same laws of progression with communicated knowledge, and the belief in ghosts, evil spirits, and sorcery, current among the ruder East Indian tribes, in Madagascar, and in a great part of Africa, seems to indicate that such ideas may have elsewhere preceded a regular form of mythology.”[41] There has long been practised in the West Indies a species of witchcraft called _Obeah_ or _Obi_, supposed to have been introduced from Africa, and which is in reality an ingenious system of poisoning. Mr. Bowrey, Government chemist in Jamaica, connects Obeah-poisoning with a plant which grows abundantly in Jamaica and other West Indian islands, called the “savannah flower,” or “yellow-flowered nightshade” (_Urechites suberecta_).[42] Mr. Bowrey concludes that there is some truth in the stories told of the poisoning by Obeah-men, and that minute doses, frequently administered, might cause death without suspicion being aroused. The _British Medical Journal_, June 18th, 1892, has the following interesting notes on Obeah (p. 1296):—