To the mind of primitive man the idea of disease and death from natural causes is almost unknown. According to Decle (64, p. 117) the natives all over Africa have no conception of death as a natural occurrence. Numerous other observers confirm this opinion. The Cherokee myth (18, 7th, p. 319) which accounts for the origin of disease and death tells us that in the olden time the animals and man lived peaceably together and disease and death were not known. As time went on, however, men increased so rapidly that they began to crowd the animals and, not only so, but with the invention of the instruments of the chase, began to kill them for their flesh and skins.
In self-protection the animals held a conference and retaliated by sending death and all sorts of disease upon man. The same myth also accounts for the healing art which was made possible by the plant world which was friendly to man. To defeat the purposes of the animals each plant offered itself as a remedy for some disease.
So the Cherokee, even to the present time, believes that disease and death are unnatural and that there is always some plant, if we could only know it and invoke its aid, whose spirit would come and defeat the evil influences of animal spirits, ghosts, and witches. The Shaker Indians (18, 14th) of Puget Sound believe that disease came as a punishment for lacerating the bosom of mother earth. "In Egypt," says Maspero (57), "man does not die, but some one or something assassinates him." Spencer and Gillen (78, p. 476) find no belief in natural death among the Central Australians, for however old or decrepit a man or woman may be when this takes place it is at once supposed that it has been brought about by the magic influence of some enemy." Roth's study (72) bears out the same statement for other Australian tribes.
An Australian native, according to Lumholtz, "is unable to conceive death as natural, while diseases and plagues are always ascribed to witchcraft and to hostile blacks". In short, wherever the evil spirit theory is strictly held there is no room for the conception of disease and death as natural.
Miracles of Healing
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By Charles W. Waddle (1909)
Primitive Christian Worship
Hereditary genius
