126 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



take long (=deep) breaths. I felt much better. But when the swelling went 

 clown, I had no appetite any longer, and by the time I was well again, I was 

 quite thin. Now I am gaining weight once more. When I woke up, I told my 

 dream to my husband. I did not know whether or not this was a good dream. 

 The night (which is a 'person' who 'sends' dreams) seems to tell us what is going 

 to happen ... or is not going to happen. The name of my disease is hikwi : r 

 hahnok (snake-caused). [How do you know it is not hiwey lak nyevedhi : =anus 

 pain ghostly?] ° The two diseases are much alike. Both start the same way, but 

 when the illness gets worse, the ghost (nyevedhi:) element comes into the 

 picture." 



Comment 



Tentative diagnosis. — The fact that the swelling of the abdomen and the 

 shortness of breath rapidly improved after a crucial night suggested to Martin 

 H. Stein, M. D., and Ellis Devereux, M. D., the possibility that this old woman 

 had been suffering from right heart failure, causing an accumulation of fluid in 

 the body, which was alleviated in a single night by a (temporary) cardiac 

 recovery. 



Cultural comment. — In this dream, snakes function as healing shamans, treat- 

 ing an illness caused by snakes. This double function of snakes tallies with 

 the belief that he who can cure a certain illness can also cause it (Devereux, 

 1937 c). The snake as a therapist is not a specifically Mohave cultural phenome- 

 non. Snakes played a significant role in the ancient Greek Aesculapian cult, and 

 its cult emblem, the caduceus, survives as a medical symbol to this day. The 

 fact that these dream snakes spontaneously offer to treat the dreamer is, however, 

 atypical, since real shamans wait to be consulted by prospective patients or their 

 families ; they are not ambulance chasers. On the other hand, the snakes cured 

 the dreamer by standard Mohave means, e.g., they blew on the patient, though, 

 unlike real shamans, they sang no songs. It is also significant that even though 

 such snakes may appear in pathogenic dreams disguised as human scalper- 

 funeral-ritualist-foreign-disease-healers, in this curing dream they appear in 

 their real shape. The fact that two snakes treated the patient simultaneously 

 is also atyr>ical, since two shamans never treat a patient at one and the same 

 time. Possibly the appearance of two snakes may be a dream expression of 

 belief in the existence of a two-headed chief of the hikwi :r, the meaning of 

 which is indicated above. With regard to the hole into which the snakes dis- 

 appear, it is well known that snakes do not dig holes for themselves, but preempt 

 holes dug by small burrowing animals, such as rats. The Mohave believe that 

 the soul of a very young child, whose chin has not yet been tattooed, does not 

 go to the land of the dead that lies under the Colorado River' but into a rat 

 hole, and sometimes returns to the womb of its mother, causing pseudocyesis 

 (false pregnancy), which is one of the forms of the hiwey lak nyevedhi: illness 

 (pt. 4, pp. 150-175). 



Interpretation. — Aristotle knew that one may perceive in dream the onset 

 of an illness long before one becomes conscious of it in a waking state. 



"The purposes of this question were: (1) To test the dreamer's conviction of the cor- 

 rectness of her diagnosis (pt. 1, pp. 24-35). (2) To clarify whether the manifest content 

 of the dream preceding Illness or the symptoms of the Illness form the basis of Mohave 

 diagnoses. Indeed, the swelling of an older woman's abdomen is often believed to be 

 caused by a ghost pregnancy (pt. 4 pp. 150-175). 



• It should be noted in this connection that even though the hikwi : r snakes are said 

 to live In water, they were never mentioned to me In connection with the Colorado River. 



