424 



ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1937 



animals. Why did they use such things? In order to make the in- 

 dwelling demon of disease so disgusted that he would get out and 

 not come back. Actually some of the prescriptions were labeled "for 

 the expelling or terrifying of the disease." 



The Chinese have the same idea today, and in the Flowery King- 

 dom, when a man lies desperately ill his relatives will sometimes 

 hire orchestras to keep up such an infernal din all day and all night 

 that the devil causing the disease will get worn out from lack of rest 

 and sleep and will depart for a quieter place! 



Figure 3.— Gathering herbs for the healing of the sick. 



MIXTURES OF THE MAGICAL AND THE PRACTICAL 



But to get back to the Ebers papyrus: As I have already pointed 

 out, one finds there many instances of a very common medical prac- 

 tice, and this is the mixture of the magical and the practical. As 

 one would expect, all through the ages the two systems have been 

 combined more or less unconsciously by practitioners of the two types. 

 Sometimes the witch doctor or the mental healer has used manipu- 

 lations and even drugs, and the old herb doctor has taken care to 

 gather his plants with a certain ritual or while mumbling spells, and 

 only during certain phases of the moon. Furthermore, the herb doc- 

 tor has often fallen from grace, scientifically speaking, and has pre- 

 scribed a drug not because experience showed him that it was useful 

 but perhaps because the astrologers believed that it and the disease 



