The Origin and Growth of the Healing Art: A Popular History of Medicine in All Ages and Countries — John Shaqi
The Origin and Growth of the Healing Art: A Popular History of Medicine in All Ages and CountriesBerdoe, Edward
History
The Origin and Growth of the Healing Art: A Popular History of Medicine in All Ages and Countries
Berdoe, Edward
Medicine -- History
The mountaineers of the Neilgherries endeavour to induce the demon they
invoke to enter into the body of the “medium,” a dancer who pretends
to the intoxication of prophecy. If they can persuade the demon of
pestilence or typhoid fever to enter into the medium, it becomes
possible to act upon and influence him.[73]
The people of Tartary make a great puppet when fever is prevalent,
which they call the Demon of Intermittent Fevers, and which when
completed they set up in the tent of the patients.
Mr. Forbes, in his account of the tribes of the island of Timor, says
that the natives believe all diseases to be the result of sorcery, and
they carry a variety of herbs and charms to avert its influence. He
says: “I had as a servant an old man, who one morning complained of
being in a very discomposed and generally uncomfortable state, and of
being afraid he was going to die. He had seen, he said, the spirit of
his mother in the night, she had been present by him and had spoken
with him. He feared, therefore, that he was about to die. He begged
of me some tobacco and rice to offer to her, which I gave him. He
retired a little way to a great stone in the ground, and laying on
it some betel and pinang, with a small quantity of chalk, along with
a little tobacco and rice, he repeated for some eight or ten minutes
an invocation which I did not understand. The rice and the chalk he
left on the stone, which were very shortly after devoured by my fowls;
the tobacco, betel, and pinang he took away again, to be utilised by
himself.”[74]
When the medicine-man of these tribes calls to see a patient, he
looks very closely at him, to endeavour to perceive the sorcerer who
is making him ill. Then he returns to his home and makes up some
medicines, which the happy patient has not however to swallow, but
the drugs having been packed by the doctor into a bundle with a small
stone, are thrown away as far as possible from the sick man; the stone
finds out the sorcerer and returns to the doctor, who gives it to his
patient and tells him it will cure him if he will wear it about his
neck. This affords another illustration of the universal belief of the
value of amulets in medicine.
Medicine amongst certain tribes has a connection with the adoration
of particular objects and animals believed to be related to each
separate stock or blood-kindred of human beings, and which is known in
anthropology as totemism. The Algonquin Indians use the name, Bear,
Wolf, Tortoise, Deer, or Rabbit to designate each of a number of clans
into which the race is divided. The animal is considered as an ancestor
or protector of the tribe.
In considering the institutions of “totemism” and “medicine,” we must
not forget that savage “medicine” has a function somewhat different
from that of medicine in our sense of the word. Some doubt if there be
any real distinction between the totem and the medicine.[75]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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