1953} RITZENTHALER, CHIPPEWA HEALTH 191 



2. BREACH OF TABOO. All theories which explain sickness as a 

 punishment sent by the gods for breach of religious prohibitions 

 or social prohibitions having divine sanction, are included under 

 this heading. The breach may be quite unintentional and even 



I unknown to the sufferer but it is none-the-less regarded as the 

 real cause of his sickness. 



3. DISEASE-OBJECT INTRUSION. Under this heading are listed all 

 theories attributing disease to the presence in the body of some 

 malefic foreign substance. This need not be intrinsically patho- 

 genic and usually takes the form of a bit of bone, hair, a pebble, 

 splinter of wood, or even small animals, such as lizards, worms, 

 and insects. 



4. SPIRIT INTRUSION. This class includes all those etiologies which 

 hold that disease is due to the presence in the body of evil spirits, 

 ghosts, or demons. 



5. I SOUL LOSS. This class includes all theories attributing sickness to 

 1 loss of the soul (Clements, pp. 186-190). 



He then proceeds to list 298 tribes or areas giving the disease concepts 

 as reported for each. The Chippewa are reported as having four of the five 

 concepts, leaving only breach of taboo as unreported for the tribe. How- 

 ever, this compilation was based on Hoffman's classic work on the Mide- 

 wiwin, which was not especially concerned with curing and contains no 

 information concerning the breaking of taboos. The Chippewa definitely 

 have the concept of breach of taboo as causing sickness. The breaking of 

 either menstrual or mourning taboos can be directly responsible for sickness, 

 and some actual cases will be cited in a later section on this subject. Thus 

 the Chippewa must be listed as having all five disease concepts, a phenom- 

 enon shared by only four other groups in the world according to the 

 Clements' tabulation: the Maori, the Baganda, the two areas — Borneo and 

 Peru. "While a tabulation of this sort cannot be regarded as completely 

 accurate because of the lack of full and accurate source material for certain 

 areas, it nevertheless does indicate the relative extent to which certain peoples 

 developed their thinking along the lines of disease causation. The aware- 

 ness of the Chippewa to all five possibilities suggests a certain preoccupation 

 with the problem of sickness. 



