210 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



that on this particular night water has extraordinary 

 magical therapeutic qualities. In the old days such a 

 midnight bath was especially supposed to strengthen the 

 legs. It may, then, surely be taken for granted that wash- 

 ing was originally an unnatural and special process. It 

 should not be difficult to show doctors that it is still as 

 hard to convert the uneducated on this point as on that 

 of ventilation, since, as students, they have had to attend 

 their due number of outside midwifery cases. What then 

 was the reason for washing, and how did bathing and 

 swimming become a custom ? We may say definitely that 

 all contact with water, except that used for drinking, and 

 perhaps even that, was definitely purificatory or medicinal 

 or magical. Even the still surviving " grace before meat " 

 is probably a protective incantation. But long before 

 such ideas arose primitive man held that all natural agencies 

 were infinitely suggestible. He hypnotized them with 

 ritual, and they did what they were told to do if the rite 

 was properly performed. Balneologists may therefore 

 look upon themselves as recognized descendants of those 

 ancient practitioners who employed powerful and dangerous 

 waters in early magical therapeutics. 



The history of evolution, as read in the scanty but 

 pregnant documents of anthropology, is difficult to decipher. 

 It resembles an organism which shows obscurely by rudi- 

 mentary and dwindling mechanisms the processes of past 

 growth. Yet some things are sure. In the million or 

 two million years of the life of man the animistic and pre- 

 animistic periods cannot be divided. Both theories survive 

 still, and if animism is perishing, and the magician's view 

 is crescent once more with the advance of science not 

 falsely so-called, it will take immense eras of time before 

 it becomes dominant. It is, therefore, not inconsistent 



