[1309] T. J. Pettigrew, Superstitions connected with the History and Practice of Medicine and Surgery (London, 1844), pp. 117–154; W. G. Black, Folk-Medicine (London, 1883), pp. 140 sqq.; W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1892), i. 84–90. Down to the end of the eighteenth century it was believed in the Highlands of Scotland that some tribes of Macdonalds had the power of curing a certain disease by their touch and the use of a particular set of words. Hence the disease, which attacked the chest and lungs, was called “the Macdonald’s disease.” We are told that the faith of the people in the touch of a Macdonald was very great. See Rev. Dr. Th. Bisset, “Parish of Logierait,” in Sir John Sinclair’s Statistical Account of Scotland, iii. (Edinburgh, 1792) p. 84.
[1310] Baron Roger, “Notice sur le gouvernement, les mœurs et les superstitions du pays de Walo,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Paris), viii. (1827) p. 351.
[1311] W. Mariner, An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands, Second Edition (London, 1818), i. 434, note.
[1312] To this subject we shall recur later on. Meantime I may refer the reader to The Golden Bough, Second Edition, i. 319 sqq., 343; Psyche’s Task, pp. 5 sqq.
[1313] A Roman name for jaundice was “the royal disease” (morbus regius). See Horace, Ars poetica, 453; Celsus, De medicina, iii. 24. Can this have been because the malady was believed to be caused and cured by kings? Did the sight or touch of the king’s red or purple robe ban the yellow tinge from the skin of the sufferer? As to such homoeopathic cures of jaundice, see above, pp. [79] sqq.
[1314] Proyart’s “History of Loango, Kakongo, and other Kingdoms in Africa,” in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, xvi. 573.
CHAPTER VII—Incarnate Human Gods
[1315] A reminiscence of this evolution is preserved in the Brahman theology, according to which the gods were at first mortal and dwelt on earth with men, but afterwards attained immortality and ascended to heaven by means of sacrifice. See S. Lévi, La Doctrine du sacrifice dans les Brâhmanas (Paris, 1898), pp. 37–43, 59–61, 84 sq.
[1316] See above, pp. [240]–242.
[1317] Monier Williams, Religious Life and Thought in India, p. 268. However, as to the son of the carpenter it is said that “his followers scarcely worshipped him as a god, yet they fully believed in his power of working miracles.”