Methods of Treatment, Exorcism, etc..
If the first theory of disease was the evil spirit theory, the first reasoned treatment of it must have been entirely by magical means. The only methods admissible on such a theory are conciliation, transfer, or expulsion of the supernatural agent. The great variety of ways in which these ends were accomplished a few examples may illustrate. The shamans of the Algonquian, Ojibwa, Apache, Sioux, Sia, and other Indian tribes as well as the Malays, Australian blacks, and peoples in other parts of the world have a simple magical procedure known as the sucking method. Placing the mouth, a hollow bone, or a rope over the seat of disease they proceed to suck vigorously until the spirit, the immediate cause of disease is drawn out and disposed of in some way.
The Malays (76) frequently construct a basket, which they fill with food and other offerings to attract the evil spirit. When it has accomplished this end, the basket and its occupant are set afloat on the river or taken to a desolate part of the forest and left. Others drown the spirit in a bowl of water or command it to leave the place. Among the Egyptians the disease demons were supposed to obey the gods, so when the healer was practicing his art he assumed the personality of the divinity to whom the disease demon, with which he chanced to be dealing, was supposed to be especially amenable and was then ready to command the spirit as if he were the very god whom he personated. He even had the power to call to his assistance other divinities if he deemed it necessary.
Chaldea had sorcerers and exorcists who were experts in casting out, by magical means, demons and spirits which caused disease to the body they inhabited. The magician sometimes lighted a fire of herbs the clear flame of which was believed to frighten away the spirits and their evil influence.
Accompanying this, to add to its effect, a prayer was offered in which the enchantments and their expected results were described.
In China, Japan, the Malay Peninsula, and among numerous primitive as well as with more civilized peoples, prayers and ceremonies are used to induce the destroying demon to remove his baleful influence. The most common method of treatment with the Bering Strait Eskimo is the incantation of the shaman.
With the Malay and some African tribes the evil spirits are propitiated by offerings, or conjured or tricked from their human habitations in various ways. In one of the cases described by Skeat (76, p. 429) the shaman mixed some pulverized woods in water with which he washed the patient's body; then with a bunch of leaves, he brushed the patient from head to foot till at last the spirit was driven out; when with his dagger the shaman succeeded, after much ado, in destroying it. The Yakuts (50:4, p. 99) apply fire to the part where the yor is supposed to be until the bursting of the skin apprises them of the exit of the evil spirit.
The ancient Greeks believed that disease demons were to be conciliated by lustrations, invocations, prayers, offerings, and music; and one cannot fail to note the prominent place that music, or perhaps more truthfully noise, holds in the treatment of the sick by many primitive peoples. As a rule its purpose is ostensibly to frighten or conciliate the spirit of disease.
When disease is supposed to be due to any of the causes more indirectly traceable to the influence of evil spirits, the methods of treatment are not essentially different. The sucking ceremony mentioned above is often used to extract poison, a stone, a splinter of wood or bone, or other object that has been conjured into the body.
Sometimes the Malay shaman cures by rubbing the body over with a piece of dough which gathers up the object causing the trouble (76). The same people often consider breathing on the patient or on the medicine an effectual means. "The miraculous cures of the Messiah," says Burton, "were, according to the Moslems mostly performed by aspiration." (Arabian Nights V, p. 30). The folklore of all peoples is full of magic means of many kinds with which to combat every sort of disease. White, magic can suspend the law of destiny, combat the influence of secondary deities, the evil eye, and spells cast by evil persons. Some of these magic means deserve more detailed treatment.
Miracles of Healing
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By Charles W. Waddle (1909)
Primitive Christian Worship
Hereditary genius
