78 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



safe. Their devotions and sacrifices are prompted 

 by fear rather than by gratitude. 



Tanner mentions, in his "Narrative of a Captivity 

 among the Indians," that he once heard a con- 

 valescent patient reproved for his imprudence in 

 exposing himself to the air, since his shade had not 

 altogether come back to abide within him. For this 

 purpose, and in conformity with such ideas, when the 

 sorcerer Malgaco wishes to cure a sick man, he makes 

 a hole in a tomb to let out the spirit, which he then 

 takes in his cap, and constrains it to enter the 

 patient's head. The process of disease is supposed 

 to be a struggle between the sick person and the evil 

 spirit of sickness. The Greek woid.prophylak^ signifies 

 the arrangements of outposts. Agonia is the hottest 

 moment of conflict, and AT/* is the decisive day of 

 battle, as we see in Polybius, 1'iii., c. 89. Medicine 

 was from the earliest times confounded with magic, 

 which is only the primitive form of the conception of 

 nature. The Aryan rulers in India in ancient times 

 believed that the savage races were autochthonic 

 workers of magic who were able to assume any form 

 they pleased.* The negro priests of fetish worship 

 believe that they can pronounce on the disease with- 

 out seeing the patient, by the aid of his garments 

 or of anything which belongs to hini.f The super- 

 stition of the evil eye recurs in Vedic India, as well 



* Muir, Sanscrit 



t Burton, }\'ct>t Africa ; Tylor, Primitive Culture. 



