ORIGIN OF THERAPEUTIC BATHING 221 



called rheumatic affections, may do good is certain; 

 but it is quite impossible to believe that such a mode 

 of healing was discovered except through generations 

 of trial and error undertaken for other purposes. The 

 original reason of such a ceremony arose from the desire 

 to free widows or widowers from the probable results of 

 contact with death. They required purification, and for 

 this purpose they sweated for hours, and then were 

 plunged, or plunged themselves, into the neighbouring 

 creek, after which they rubbed themselves with small 

 branches of spruce which had been stuck into the 

 ground close to the little teepee. There is no more 

 striking instance of the way in which magic at purificatory 

 ceremonies might easily have become measures of pure 

 therapeutics. Such a complete series of vaso-motor 

 and peripheral stimuli may well have helped to cure 

 grief. No real anthropologist will fall into the modern 

 error of believing grief " natural." It is due, as the 

 fathers of man knew only too well, to the actual influences 

 emanating from the dead, or their active spirits. In 

 view of such facts I think it may legitimately be in- 

 ferred that curative baths of every kind began by the 

 practice of magic, and that all such processes were re- 

 inforced gradually, as magic gave way to religion, by 

 religious purificatory methods. These same Thompson 

 River Indians were accustomed if they touched the dead 

 to bathe instantly, or as soon as possible afterwards. 

 Where these keekwillie holes do not exist widows and 

 widowers were still obliged to bathe. Bereaved persons, 

 even in modern times, are also compelled to pass four 

 times through a patch of wild rose bushes in order to 

 rid themselves of the ghost. Not only this, but it 

 is still customary among these people to cut branches 



