BENEDICT, BAGOBO CEREMONIAL, MAGIC AND MYTH 231 



areca-nuts and betel-leaf. Naturally, then, some of these healing 

 remedies might just as properly be catalogued under the heading, 

 "Charms having Inherent Virtue." 



The overlapping of magic and medicine is a phenomenon that 

 is impressed on anybody who talks with the natives on such sub- 

 jects. One becomes distinctly aware of the lack of complete defi- 

 nition of such terms as bawi and alang — two words in constant 

 use. There is certainly a tendency to use alang for what we call 

 a charm or a talisman, and to give the name bawi to drugs and 

 to external medicinal applications. This distinction, however, does 

 not hold throughout, for certain charms against demons are quite 

 as often named bawi ka huso as alang ka buso ; while, contrariwise, 

 a medicine to rub on the skin may be alang. One realizes, in 

 listening to a Bagobo as he rapidly repeats a list of medicines, 

 that he does not distinguish drugs from charm objects ; he runs 

 them all confusingly together. Any line, too, that we ourselves 

 might attempt to draw between the healing by materia medica and 

 the healing by spells would be a highly artificial line. "I used to 

 be a leper," said one of my boys, "but I took an areca-nut, and 

 stroked the sores on my skin, and after that I got well very quick." 

 Even when a mode of treatment might be termed, from our own 

 point of view, a "rational" mode, such as inhaling hot fumes for 

 a cough, a touch of magic is usually required to make the treat- 

 ment work. 304 A fixed number of inhalations is required if relief 

 is looked for ; two wafts of smoke are to be repeated, say three 

 times, for to repeat four or five times would be termed madat, 

 that is, unlucky. 



Among the chief modes of treatment are the following: stroking 

 and rubbing ; inhaling of medicinal fumes ; drinking water containing 

 the ashes of a burnt object; wearing a medicine attached to necklace 

 or jacket. We may distinguish certain clearly-marked groups, in one 

 of which the factor of fire plays a prominent part, (a) The method 

 of burning; (b) The method of external use without burning; (c) 

 The method of internal use without burning; (d) The method of 

 wearing or of carrying the medicine on the person. 



3 6 * Similarly, the Indo-Iranians held that sickness should be cured by magical spells 

 and by washing. "In fact, the medicine of spells was considered the most powerful of 

 all, and although it did not oust the medicine of . . . drugs, yet it was more highly 

 esteemed." J. Daemestetrr (tr.): "The Vendidad." Sacred books of the East, vol. 4, 

 pp. lxxx, 108 et cet. 



