Amongst many savage tribes their medicine-men pretend to remove diseases by sucking the affected part of the body. They have previously placed bits of bone, stones, etc., in their mouths, and they pretend they have removed them from the patient, and exhibit them as proofs of their success. The Shaman, or wizard-priest of the religion still existing amongst the peoples of Northern Asia, who pretends to have dealings with good and evil spirits, is the successor of the priests of Accad; thus is the Babylonian religion reduced to the level of the heathenism of Mongolia.
The aborigines of the Darling River, New South Wales, believe that sickness is caused by an enemy, who uses certain charms called the Yountoo and Molee. The Yountoo is made from a piece of bone taken from the leg of a deceased friend. This is wrapped up in a piece of the dried flesh from the body of another deceased friend. The package is tied with some hair from the head of a third friend. When this charm is used against an enemy, it is taken to the camp where he sleeps, and after certain rites are performed it is pointed at the person to be injured. The doctor of the tribe attributes disease to this sort of enchantment, and pretends to suck out of his patient the piece of bone which he declares has entered his body and caused the mischief. The Molee is a piece of white quartz, which is pointed at the victim with somewhat similar ceremonies and consequences. The possessors of these powerful charms take care to hide them from view. When the doctor, or Maykeeka, sucks out the Yountoo—bone chip—from his patient, he must throw it away. The Molee must be cast into water.
Mr. F. Bonney read a paper on “Some Customs of the Aborigines of the River Darling,” before the Anthropological Society of Great Britain, May 8th, 1883, in which the process of curing diseases is described. He says: “On one occasion, when I was camped in the Purnanga Ranges, I watched by the light of a camp-fire a doctor at work, sucking the back of a woman who was suffering from pains in that part. While she sat on a log a few yards distant from the camp-fire, he moved about her, making certain passes with boughs which he held, and then sucked for some time the place where pain was felt; at last he took something from his mouth, and, holding it towards the firelight, declared it to be a piece of bone. The old women sitting near loudly expressed their satisfaction at his success. I asked to be allowed to look at it, and it was given to me. I carelessly looked at it, and then pretended to throw it into the fire, but, keeping it between my fingers, I placed it in my pocket, when I could do so unobserved; and on the following morning, when I examined it by daylight, it proved to be a small splinter of wood, and not bone. At the time the patient appeared to be very much relieved by the treatment.” Another mode of treatment described by Mr. Bonney is that of sucking poison, supposed to have been sent into the patient by an enemy, through a string. The patient complained of sickness in the stomach; the woman doctor placed the patient on her back on the ground, tied a string round the middle of her naked body, leaving a loose end about eighteen inches long. The doctress then began sucking the string, passing the loose end through her mouth, from time to time spitting blood and saliva into a pot. She repeated this many times, until the patient professed to be cured.
The people of Timor-laut, near the island of New Guinea, scar themselves on the arms and shoulders with red-hot stones, in imitation of immense small-pox marks, in order to ward off that disease.[62]
Among the Kaffirs diseases are all attributed to three causes—either to being enchanted by an enemy, to the anger of certain beings whose abode appears to be in the rivers, or to the power of evil spirits.[63]
“Among the Kalmucks,” says Lubbock, “the cures are effected by exorcising the evil spirit. This is the business of the so-called ‘priests,’ who induce the evil spirit to quit the body of the patient and enter some other object. If a chief is ill, some other person is induced to take his name, and then, as is supposed, the evil spirit passes into his body.”[64]
Pritchard tells us that “the priests of the Negroes are also the physicians, as were the priests of Apollo and Æsculapius. The notions which the Negroes entertain of the causes of diseases are very different. The Watje attribute them to evil spirits whom they call Dobbo. When these are very numerous, they ask of their sacred cotton-tree permission to hunt them out. Hereupon a chase is appointed, and they do not cease following the demons with arms and great cries until they have chased them beyond their boundaries. This chase of the spirits of disease is very customary among many nations of Guinea, who universally believe that many diseases arise from enchantment, and others by the direction of the Deity.”[65]
It is interesting to note, as showing the ingenuity of the priests, that during the extremely dangerous rainy season the doctors’ remedies are of very little use; then the priests say this is because the gods at this particular season are obliged to appear at the court of the superior deity. During their absence at court, the priests cannot obtain access to them; and as without their advice they could not efficaciously prescribe, such medicines as they offer have little good effect.
The Antilles Indians in Columbus’s time went through the pretence of pulling the disease off the patient and blowing it away, telling it to begone to the sea or the mountains.
That the disease-demon may often be blown away by a plentiful supply of fresh air is now an article of every hygienist’s creed.