The Karens of Burmah and the Zulus both say, “The rainbow is disease. If it rests on a man, something will happen to him.”[24] “The rainbow has come to drink wells.” They say, “Look out; some one or other will come violently by an evil death.”
The Tasmanians lay their sick round a corpse on the funeral pile, that the dead may come in the night and take out the devils that cause the diseases.[25]
The Zulus believe that spirits, when angry, seize a living man’s body and inflict disease and death, and when kindly disposed give health and cattle. In Madagascar, Mr. Tylor tells us, the spirits of the Vazimbas, the aborigines of the island, inflict diseases, and the Malagasy accounts for all sorts of mysterious complaints by the supposition that he has given offence to some Vazimba. The Gold Coast negroes believe that ghosts plague the living and cause sickness. The Dayaks of Borneo think that the souls of men enter the trunks of trees, and the Hindus hold that plants are sometimes the homes of the spirits of the departed. The Santals of Bengal believe that the spirits of the good enter into fruit-bearing trees.[26] It is but another step to the belief that beneficent medicinal plants are tenanted by good spirits, and poisonous plants by evil spirits. The Malays have a special demon for each kind of disease; one for small-pox, another for swellings, and so on.[27]
The Dayaks of Borneo acknowledge a supreme God, although, as we have said, they attribute all kinds of diseases and calamities to the malignity of evil spirits. Their system of medicine consists in the application of appropriate charms or the offering of conciliatory sacrifices.[28] Yet they are an intelligent and highly capable race, and their steel instruments far surpass European wares in strength and fineness of edge.[29]
The Javanese, nominally Mahometans, are really believers in the primitive animism of their ancestry. They worship numberless spirits; all their villages have patron saints, to whom is attributed all that happens to the inhabitants, good or bad. Mentik causes the rice disease; Sawan produces convulsions in children; Dengen causes gout and rheumatism.[30]
The religion of Siam is a corrupted Buddhism; spirits and demons (nats or phees) are worshipped and propitiated. Some of these malignant beings cause children to sicken and die. Talismans are worked into the ornamentation of the houses to avert their evil influence.[31]
The Rev. J. L. Wilson[32] says: “Demoniacal possessions are common, and the feats performed by those who are supposed to be under such influence are certainly not unlike those described in the New Testament. Frantic gestures, convulsions, foaming at the mouth, feats of supernatural strength, furious ravings, bodily lacerations, grinding of teeth, and other things of a similar character, may be witnessed in most of the cases.”
In Finnish mythology, which introduces us to ideas of extreme antiquity, we find the disease-demon theory in all its force.
The Tietajat, “the learned,” and the Noijat, or sorcerers, claimed the power to cure diseases by expelling the demons which caused them, by incantations assisted by drugs; these magicians were the only physicians of the nation. The Tietajat and the Noijat, however, were not magicians of the same class: the former practised “white magic,” or “sacred science”; the latter practised “black magic,” or sorcery. Evil spirits, poisons, and malice were the chief aids to practice in the latter; while Tietajat, by means of learning and the assistance of benevolent supernatural beings, devote themselves to the welfare of the people. The three highest deities of Finnish mythology, Ukko, Wäinämöinen, and Ilmarinen, corresponded to three superior gods of the Accadian magic collection, Ana, Hea, and Mut-ge. Wäinämöinen was the great spirit of life, the master of favourable spells, conqueror of evil, and sovereign possessor of science. The sweat which dropped from his body was a balm for all diseases. It was he alone who could conquer all the demons. Every disease was itself a demon. The invasion of the disorder was an actual possession. Finnish magic was chiefly medical, being used to cure diseases and wounds.[33] The Finns believed diseases to be the daughters of Louhiatar, the demon of diseases. Pleurisy, gout, colic, consumption, leprosy, and the plague were all distinct personages. By the help of conjurations, these might be buried or cooked in a brazen vessel. When the priest made his diagnosis he had to be in a state of divine ecstasy, and then by incantation, assisted by drugs, he proceeded to exorcise the demon. The Finnish incantations belonged to the same family as those of the Accadians. Professor Lenormant translates from the great Epopee of the Kalevala one of the incantations:—
“O malady, disappear into the heavens; pain, rise up to the clouds; inflamed vapour, fly into the air, in order that the wind may take thee away, that the tempest may chase thee to distant regions, where neither sun nor moon give their light, where the warm wind does not inflame the flesh.