July 7, 1898] 



NATURE 



235 



The chapter of children's diseases is as large in medical 

 witchcraft as in modern medical science, and in the Hindu 

 charms we find numerous names of demons to whom the various 

 diseases of children are ascribed. One of these demons is 

 called the "Dog-demon," and is said to represent epilepsy 

 (though the barking dog would remind us rather of whooping- 

 cough). When a boy was attacked by the do^-demon he was 

 first covered with a net, and a gcng was beaten, or a bell rung. 

 Then the boy was brought into a gambling hall — not, however, 

 by the door, but by an opening made in the roof ; the hall 

 was sprinkled with water, the dice cast, the boy laid on his 

 back on the dice, and a mixture of curds and salt poured over 

 him, while again a gong was beaten. To drive e\il demons 

 away by means of loud noises, such as the beating of a gong, 

 was a device frequently resorted to in ancient Hindu rites, 

 ar.d bells and drums are still used in India as scarers of demons. 

 Interesting is the practice of bringing the child into the hall 

 through an opening in the roof— that is, not by the door. To 

 enter a house by any other opening but the door seems to be a 

 means of escaping the demons who are haunting the threshold. 

 Thus, according to a German superstition, it is conducive to the 

 health of a child to lift it out of the window when it is taken 

 to church to be baptised. 



Of course, the ancient Hindus knew that some maladies and 

 derangements of the human body were not caused by any mys- 

 terious power ; they knew that wounds were inflicted by 

 weapons — they knew something about the effects of poison, 

 and had an idea that certain diseases were caused by animals, 

 such aswofms. But in ancient India, as well as in German 

 folk-medicine, the teim " worms " includes all kinds of reptiles, 

 ird snakes and worms are not kept very distinct. Moreover, 

 ill kinds of diseases were ascribed to worms. And both worms 

 and snakes are actually considered as a kind of demoniacal 

 beings. The imprecations against worms are, therefore, not 

 much different from the charms against the demons. Thus we 

 read in a charm against worms in children : "Slay the worms 

 in this boy, O Indra, lord of treasures ! Slain are all the 

 evil powers by my fierce imprecation. Him that moves about 

 in the eyes, that moves about in the nose, that gets to the 

 middle of the teeth, that worm do we crush.' This fierce im- 

 1 re cation is accompanied by a rite .symbolical of the destruction 

 i<{ worms in the patient. An oblation of black lentils, mixed 

 with roasted worms and with ghee, is offered in the fire. Then 

 !he sick child is placed on its mother's lap, and, with the bottom 

 of a pestle heated in the fire and greased with butter, the 

 J alate of the child is warmed by thrice pressing upon it. Then 

 a mixture of the leaves of a horse-radish tree[and butter is applied, 

 and twenty-one {//itee times stven) dried roots of Andropogon 

 viuricatus are given to the child upon whom water is poured. 



The words of the charm leave no doubt that net only in- 

 testinal diseases, but also pains of the head, the eyes, &c., are 

 ascribed to worms. Thus, German folk-medicine knows of a 

 "finger-worm" as the causer of whitlow {Fatiaruitttii), and 

 even spasm in the stomach is ascribed to a worm, the so-called 

 "heart-worm" (Heriwumi). As the Hindu charm mentions 

 a worm "that gets to the middle of the teeth," so worms are 

 believed to be the cause of toothache almost in every part of 

 the world. " If a worm eat the teeth," says one of the pre- 

 scriptions in an English " Leech Book," "take holly rind over 

 a year old and root of carline-lhistle, boil in hot water, hold 

 in the mouth as hot as thou hottest may." In Madagascar the 

 sufferer from toothache is said to be " poorly through the 

 woim."^ In a French charm against toothache it is said : " Si 

 c'est une goutte de sang, elle tombera, si c'est un ver, il 

 mourra." In Germany a sufferer from toothache will go to a 

 pear-tree, walk three times round it, and say : " Pear-tree, I 

 complain to thee, three worms sting me, the one is grey, the 

 other is blue, the third is red— I wish they were all three dead." 

 A young Hindu friend of mine (now a student at Oxford) tells 

 me how he remembers the witch coming to his father's house 

 (in Calcutta) to cure persons suffering from toothache, and how 

 after some hocus-pocus she would point to some cotton threads 

 she held in her hand, saying : " Look, here are the worms 

 which I have taken out from your teeth." 



In the Buddhist scriptures we read of an extremely clever 

 physician, Jivaka, who performed many marvellous cures. 

 Once upon a time, we are told, there lived in the capital of 

 Magadha a rich merchant who had been suffering for seven 

 years from a disease in the head. Many renowned physicians 

 1 See W. G. Blatk, " Folk-Medicine," p. 32 seq. 

 NO. 1497, VOL. 58] 



came to see him, received much money, and went away with- 

 out effecting a cure. At last the physicians agreed that the 

 merchant must die ; some said on the fifth day, others on the 

 seventh day. Now Jivaka, the physician in ordinary to the 

 King of Magadha, was sent for, and he promised to cure the 

 merchant if he would give him a good fee. "All that I 

 possess shall be yours, doctor, and I will be your slave," 

 said the merchant. "Well, my good householder, will you 

 be able to lie down on one side for seven months ? " asked the 

 doctor. The merchant said he would. Would he be able to 

 lie down on the other side for seven months, and on his back 

 for another seven months ? The patient thought he would be 

 able to do so. Upon this the doctor ordered him to lie down, 

 tied him fast to his bed, cut through the skin of the head, drew 

 apart the flesh on each side of the incision, pulled two worms 

 out of the wound, and, showing them to the people, said : " See, 

 sirs, these two worms, a small one and a big one. The doctors 

 who said that the patient would die on the fifth day had seen 

 the big worm, those who said he would die on the seventh day 

 had seen the small worm." Then he stitched up the skin of the 

 head, and anointed it with salve. But after seven days the mer- 

 chant said he could not lie down any longer on one side. Jivaka 

 ordered him to lie down on the other side for seven months. 

 Again, after seven days, the patient said he could not bear it 

 any longer. The doctor ordered him to lie down on his back 

 for seven months, but he could bear this for seven days only. 

 Then the doctor told him that he was quite well now, and that 

 he knew beforehand the patient would be well in three times 

 seveit^ days, but if he had told him so at the outset he would 

 never have lain down even for so short a time. 



This Jivaka was a respectable man, an esteemed friend of 

 Buddha himself, and a pious Bud'dhist. That the science of 

 medicine had reached a comparatively high stage of development 

 at the period when the Buddhist scriptures were compiled (say 

 about 350 B.C.) is proved by the chapter on medicaments found 

 in the " Vinayapitaka,"- and by the various stories told of Jivaka. 

 Yet there are traces even in these stories showing that 

 physicians were considered as a class of uncanny creatures. 

 "The physicians are cunning people," says King Pajjota, one 

 of Jivaka's patients. In the ancient Hindu, i.e. Brahmanic, 

 law-books, a very low social position is assigned to the 

 physicians. They rank with temple-priests (who are in 

 attendance to some popular idol), sellers of meat, hunters, 

 usurers, women of bad character, outcasts, thieves, and eunuchs. 

 They are not admitted to funeral meals and sacrifices, they re- 

 ceive no hospitality from members of the highest castes, and no 

 orthodox Biahman is allowed to accept food from a physiciaii. 



This degraded position of the medical profession in ancient 

 India is, no doubt, due to the fact that in India, as in other 

 countries, the physician is the direct descendant of the wizard 

 and sorcerer. And although I do not believe that Sir Alfred 

 Lyall =• has succeeded in proving witchcraft to be " the 

 aboriginal and inveterate antagonist of religion or theology "— » 

 the witchcraft practices of the ancient Hindus, and of all 

 primitive people, rather prove an intimate connection be- 

 tween witchcraft and popular religious belief— -yet I think he 

 would be right if he had said only "-theology" instead ot 

 ''religion or theology." Witchcraft is always opposed to 

 theology, and there is a natural rivalry between the wizard 

 and the priest. And, as in India, the Brahmans, the pro- 

 fessional theologians, became the most dominant class, their 

 antagonists— the wizard and his descendant, the physician— were 

 naturally degraded and excluded from the higher ranks of society. 

 This antagonism between witchcraft and theology is the same 

 as that between science and theology in more recent tinies. 

 For the witch who depends not merely on supernatural agencies, 

 but on actual observation of natural phenomena and on some 

 sort of reasoning (which may not be logical, but can always be 

 justified on psychological grounds) is, after all, the humble pre- 

 cursor of the man of science. To quote again Sir Alfred Lyall, 

 "he is just touching, though he may only touch and let go, a 

 line of thought which points, albeit vaguely and most crookedly, 

 towards something like mental independence." It is this 

 historical connection between witchcraft and science that gives 

 an intrinsic scientific interest to the study of folk-medicine. 



M. WiNTERNITZ. 



1 Compare the import.-ince of this number hi the witchcraft practices 

 mentioned above. • 



2 See " Sacred Books of the East, vol. xvu. p. 41 seq. 



3 " Asiatic Studies," 1884, p. 76- 



