BENEDICT, BAGOBO CEREMONIAL, MAGIC AND MYTH 233 



the limokim pigeon), or any other object from which fumes regarded 

 as curative may be extracted. The patient, or some friend, puts 

 his hand near the burning medicine, and wafts the smoke toward 

 the nose or the sore chest or the aching head. It is not unlikely, 

 though this inference is my own, that this treatment may be assumed 

 to smoke out the disease-demon from the body, exactly as wild 

 bees are smoked out from their tree-homes while the hunt for wax 

 and honey is going on. 



A similar method of treatment, though no actual smoke is pre- 

 sent, is that made use of to cure pain all through the body (tapan). 

 Numbers of tiny brown calyxes from a plant called sale are kept 

 strung on a thread of hemp, and alternating with these calyxes 

 are little fiat, black, glossy seeds known as teling, also pierced and 

 strung. From this flowerlike chain of brown and black, the patient 

 takes one calyx and one seed and puts them into the flame of a 

 candle or a torch. He then places his hand near the flame, and 

 waves it twice toward his face, so that each time the flame will 

 bend in his direction, after each of which moves he passes his 

 hand over his face from forehead to chin. He is to repeat exactly 

 three times the double wafting of the flame and the double stroking 

 of the face, for to repeat four or five times is very unlucky. 



Method of External Use without Burning. Another class of medi- 

 cines include those that are never put into the fire, but are simply 

 rubbed on the painful spot, or drawn lightly over the skin. Certain 

 fruits and seed-pods are rubbed on the stomach; kamogna root is 

 shaped into very small discs, mixed with betel, chewed and spit 

 upon the abdomen, the head, or the chest; the fruit of esor is 

 chewed with betel and rubbed with three upward strokes on a 

 sore chest; vegetable gums furnish a panacea for pains in head, 

 thorax, wrists and feet, provided they are rubbed on the part with 

 a gentle downward stroke; from strings of seeds that hang from 

 the necklace a few are cut off, mixed with betel, spit on the finger, 

 and with the finger rubbed on an aching head; selected fruits and 

 bits of wood have only to be touched to lame arms and legs, and 

 many roots are used in like manner. Leprosy is said to yield to 

 a few passes made with an areca-nut on the sores, the magical 

 motions being manipulated in this, as in many other modes of healing, 

 by the patient himself. 



A panacea for any and every bodily pain was brought to me by 

 Aglang. It was a vegetable gum tied up in a cotton girdle, the 



