Disease, as among most primitive peoples the world over, was usually held to be caused by small material objects which had in a supernatural way been caused to enter the body. The determination and extraction of these was the principal office of the medicine-man and, also as elsewhere, was most frequently accomplished by sucking. In certain regions, especially the South, the tubular pipe was brought into requisition for this purpose, the disease-object being supposed to be sucked into the doctor's mouth through it. Among such tribes the pipe was also smoked by the medicine-man as part of his ritual. In other cases the sucking was performed directly with the mouth, but, just as the disease-causing object had by supernatural means entered the body without causing or leaving an opening, so it was extracted by the medicine-man without an incision or a trace of its passage. This object might be a bit of hair, a stick, an insect or small reptile, a piece of bone, deer sinew, or almost any other material. In the greater part of northern California, including the Northwestern region, it was not an ordinary physical object working mischief by its mere presence in the body or by the supernatural properties with which the shaman or his spirits had endowed it, but an object itself supernatural and called a "pain." These pains are variously described, frequently as being sharp at both ends and clear as ice. They possessed the power of moving even after extracted, and were able to fly through the air to the intended victim at the command of the person who had sent them. The medicine-man after extracting the disease-object or pain almost always exhibited it. It was then either destroyed by him or kept by him for his own use. In Northwestern California he sometimes swallowed it, the degree of his power being thought to be dependent upon the number of pains he kept in his body, both those which he received upon his becoming a shaman, when they were "cooked" before a great fire in the doctor-initiation dance, and those which he subsequently secured in doctoring his patients. The rattlesnake's bite was regarded as being dangerous on account of its injection into the victim's body of a material animate object, which the rattlesnake shaman must extract if death was not to ensue. Among the Yuki this object was a small snake; among the Yokuts a rodent's tooth or other object supposed to have formed part of the animals upon which the snake subsisted. In some cases two classes of medicine-men were distinguished, one diagnosing, the other treating the patient. Among the Wiyot or Wishosk the former by dancing before the patient saw in a vision the nature and location of the disease-object and determined what had caused it to enter the body. Somewhat similar though varying distinctions between shamans whose power consists of knowledge, and those who have practical capacity as well, occurred among other tribes. Sucking is not always resorted to. The Mohave