FIEE AS AN AGENT IN HUMAN CULTURE 79 



SANITATION 



There are a few recorded instances where fire or one of the prod- 

 ucts of fire, as smoke, was definitely employed as a sanitary agent. 

 Smoke as a preservative of food and in various other technological 

 uses was perhaps early known. These features will be treated in 

 another place. As an instance of sanitation among the ancients, it 

 is observed that Ulysses after the punishment of Melanthesis and 

 the sla3nng of the suitors had his house purified by burning sulphnr.^' 



Bundles of willow twigs were kept by the Point Barrow Eskimo to 

 be burnt one at a time to destroy bad odors.^® 



While smoke may appear to be merely a means of disguising odors, 

 or even for the production of sweet odors, as Shakespeare says, "and 

 burn sweet herbs to make the chamber sweet," it undoubtedly exer- 

 cises a minor germicidal action from its constituents. 



The fondness of orientals for smoke scents is well known. In Japan 

 especially the use of resins and gums worked into decorative forms 

 has risen to a high expression of art. Among the Romans this luxury 

 was carried to the extreme of perfuming the oil for lamps. Incense 

 grows out of these uses, fostered by beliefs in the efficacy of this prod- 

 uct of fire. 



HEALING 



In prescientific medicine the application of heat for heahng was 

 common and widespread. There is also information of very ancient 

 practices of this character. Crania from the Neolithic stations of 

 Feigneux, Conflans-Ste.-Honorine, Vaureal, Menonville, have been 

 found bearing cauterizations which L. Manouvrier relates to the 

 classic and mediaeval practices for the treatment of melancholia and 

 epilepsy.*" 



The usefulness of heat application is a matter of experience, and 

 is prevalent in folk and even scientific medicine to-day. Most of 

 the practices are mixed with superstition, in which no doubt the 

 ancient veneration of the mystery of fire has a prominent part. The 

 Thonga of Portuguese South Africa illustrate a widespread custom 

 in Africa and appearing elsewhere. 



"A tliird practice, quite as old as the foregoing, is the tUiema or 

 cautery. This may be done with a packet of roots which are heated 

 and applied to the part affected. But, as a general rule, cautery is 

 done with the foot. This is, undoubtedly, a curious proceeding. 

 Kokolo gave me a detailed description of it: A hoe is made red-hot, 



M O. Witt. The Wanderings of Ulysses, ch. 49, 1885, p. 216. 



" Information by Capt. E. P. Herendeen. In the Ray report on the Eskimo of Point Barrow, 9th Ann. 

 Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethnol., 1887, p. 291, these bundles are described as kindling. 



<" Les marques sincipitales des cranes neolithiQues consider^ comme reliant la cbirurgie 

 classique ancienne a la chirurgie prehistorique. Rev. de I'Ecole d'Anthropologie de Paiis, Trczieme 

 Annee, vol. 13, December, 1903. 



See also George Q. MacCurdy. Prehistoric Surgery— A Neolithic Survival, Amer. Anthrop., new 

 ser., vol. 7 1905, p. 17. 



