PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 165 



spells than the prescription of suitable remedies." Among the 

 Nootka Sound people, 



" Natural pains and maladies are invariably ascribed to the absence or 

 other irregular conduct of the soul, or to the influence of evil spirits, and 

 all treatment is directed to the recall of the former and to the appeasing of 

 the latter." 



So, too, of the Okanagans we read : 



"But here, as elsewhere, the sickness becoming at all serious or mys- 

 terious, medical treatment proper is altogether abandoned, and the patient 

 committed to the magic powers of the medicine- man." 



Sequent upon such beliefs in the supernatural origin of dis- 

 eases are various usages elsewhere. It is said of the Karens that 

 "when a person is sick, these people [medicine-men], for a fee, 

 will tell what spirit has produced the sickness, and the necessary- 

 offering to conciliate it." Among the Araucanians, the medicine- 

 man having brought on a state of trance, real or pretended, dur- 

 ing which he is supposed to have been in communication with 

 spirits, declares on his recovery 



"the nature and seat of the malady, and proceeds to dose the patient, 

 whom he also manipulates about the part afflicted until he succeeds in ex- 

 tracting the cause of the sickness, which he exhibits in triumph. This is 

 generally a spider, a toad, or some other reptile which he has had carefully 

 concealed about his person." 



Speaking of the Tahitian doctors, who are almost invariably 

 priests or sorcerers, Ellis says that in cases of sickness they re- 

 ceived fees, parts of which were supposed to belong to the gods : 

 the supposition being that the gods who had caused the diseases 

 must be propitiated by presents. A more advanced people ex- 

 hibit a kindred union of ideas. Says Gilmour 



" Mongols seldom separate medicine and prayers, and a clerical doctor 

 has the advantage over a layman in that he can attend personally to both 

 departments, administering drugs on the one hand, and performing reli- 

 gious ceremonies on the other." 



Hence the medical function of the priest. When not caused 

 by angry gods diseases are believed to be caused by indwelling 

 demons, who have either to be driven out by making the body an 

 intolerable residence, or have to be expelled by superior spirits 

 who are invoked. 



But there is often a simultaneous use of natural and super- 

 natural means, apparently implying that the primitive medicine- 

 man, in so far as he uses remedies acting physically or chemically, 

 foreshadows the physician ; yet the apparent relationship is illu- 

 sive, for those which we distinguish as natural remedies are not 

 so distinguished by him. In the first volume, in the chapter on 



