212 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



falling into it. When a seaman, I had no fear of going 

 aloft, and when climbing in the Alps in later life I have 

 been suspended by a rope over a precipice three thousand 

 feet in depth without any sense of alarm. But even now, 

 hidden running water affects me with fear, and I recollect 

 that when, as a boy of twelve, I read a story in which 

 murdered people were disposed of by being dropped 

 through a trap-door in the floor of a house situated over 

 a running stream I was deeply, and possibly permanently, 

 affected. Such phobias, whether instinctive or the result 

 of sunk and forgotten stimuli, are not infrequent. It 

 seems possible that there is some instinct in man with 

 regard to water, its dangers, its evil or beneficent effects, 

 and that this instinct is against bathing, not for it. 



Among savages, as we might reasonably expect, water 

 cannot only achieve miracles, but is also liable to be 

 affected by the conduct of men and, especially, the con- 

 duct of women. The savage ideas with regard to men- 

 struation are familiar to all. Some remnants of it, as 

 we know, still exist among civilized races ; but in certain 

 parts of the world a woman in that condition is obliged 

 to purify herself in other ways than by bathing, for if 

 she did bathe she would destroy the fish and dry up the 

 river. By the stern reasoning of the uncultivated early 

 mind contagious magic of this sort is carried to odd but, 

 in its way, logical extremes. Such a woman in many 

 places is forbidden to eat fish. This particular taboo is 

 only found among races where fish is of importance. In 

 most cases the use of water for purification seems to be 

 imperative. If menstruation is dangerous and deadly, 

 childbirth, in many cases, is still more so, and a mis- 

 carriage or a still-born child is something that requires 

 more rites and more water than any other feminine 



