176 BULi-ETIN 139, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



"A very strange remedy for fever, which I am told is still used, 

 is to make a fire drill with a piece of hard and a piece of soft wood. 

 The patient helps to work the drill. The fire passes out of his body 

 and ignites the wood and he gets well."^ 



The United States National Museum has a heaUng torch from the 

 Dyaks of Kwallan, Western Borneo. Dr. W. L. Abbott, who col- 

 lected the torch, says: 



" This thing is used to treat fever and other diseases. It is (said 

 to be) made of 50 different kinds of wood, one stick from each kind. 

 The powang or doctor sets fire to the large end and the patient 

 inhales the smoke. In case of a child (as is most often) it is held 

 over the burning fasces, which is placed on the ground." The torch 

 has many kinds of wood, probably the required number. These are 

 dressed into tapering rods and massed around the central rod of a 

 holder, whose lower extremity is carved and fitted with a loop of 

 cord for suspension; the rods are held in place by 9 bands braided 

 from brown splints of some plant (pi. 33. fig. 1). 



In regard to the use of fire products in superstitious healing, it is 

 noted that the Hopi yaya or fire priests healed burns by their magic 

 power and the application of soot. Layard observed the Yezidis ven- 

 erating the soot from lamps for use in light ceremony.* 



The Bushmen smoke ceremonially certain brushes of ostrich feathers 

 which they make. They place the brushes in a funnellike hood of 

 springbok sldn and fumigate them with smoke from a certain root, 

 the fumes passing through the hood. They control the fire so that 

 it will not flame up.^ 



FIRE WALKING 



The fire walk, in which celebrants pass over heated stones unharmed 

 is a curious custom of the East described as an ordeal, though rather 

 belonging to the class of fire juggling. Perhaps no form of ordeal is 

 better known or more widely spread than this, its antiquity dating 

 back to the days of Abraham and before, and being as various in form 

 as it is ancient. The holy writ of various nations speak of it in no 

 uncertain terms and the poet's fancy, tickled by what seems the con- 

 scious relenting of the pure element, laid hold of it in the last resort 

 to redeem the honor of his heroes and heroines. Thus, when Abraham 

 was cast into a fierce furnace by Nimrod for reproving the idolatry 

 of the latter he escaped unhurt from the flames; and Zorooster, when 

 an infant, is related as having been seized by the magicians, who 

 foresaw their future destruction at his hands, and thrown upon a huge 

 burning pile composed of wood, naptha, and sulphur, but through the 



'M. E. Durham. Some Montenegrin Manners and Customs, Journ. Anth. lost. Great Britain and 

 Ireland, 1900, p. 85. 



• Henry Layard. Ninevah and Its Remains, New York, 1859, p. 184. 



'Specimens of Bushman Folklore, pp. 359-361. Collected by W. H. I. Bleok and L. C. Lloyd, 

 London, 1911. 



