174 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



Ahma Huma :re's view that Sudhu : ra's illness was caused by his wife's ghost 

 aud not simply by his incestuous marriage was somewhat unusual, as was 

 the fact that the Mohave readily accepted this somewhat surprising etiological 

 aud diagnostic explanation. What may explain both Ahma Huma : re's diag- 

 nosis and its ready acceptance by the tribe, is the fact that it appears to be 

 patterned upon certain theories accounting for the death of a type of twins. 

 The Mohave hold that twins, one of which is a boy and the other a girl, were 

 spouses in heaven (or else, according to another theory, in the land of the 

 dead) aud, while still young, sometimes quarrel on earth, the way spouses do. 

 When that happens, the offended "spouse" may decide to die and will soon be 

 followed by the surviving twin (pt. 7, pp. 348-356). Since Sudhu: ra married 

 his second cousin, who belonged to his own gens, and since this woman had 

 died, Ahma Huma : re apparently felt impelled to equate Sudhu : ra's illness 

 with the fatal illness of the surviving twin-spouse, which, in a way is — in 

 twins — a pediatric equivalent of the ghost diseases of adults, except that, 

 in the case of twins, "marriage" precedes the sibling relationship, while in the 

 case of incestuous marriages the blood relationship precedes the union. 

 Moreover, when viewed in this context, Ahma Huma : re's diagnosis implicitly 

 takes into account also the harmful effects of incestuous marriages. The 

 considerations which induced Ahma Huma : re to make this diagnosis were, 

 thus, probably also responsible for the tribe's willingness to concur with it. 

 As for the view that Sudhu : ra's illness was aggravated by worry and remorse, 

 it is fully compatible with modern medical knowledge. 



Ahma Huma :re's avoidance of any reference to Hivsu : Tupo :ma's efforts 

 to cure Sudhu :ra was partly due to rivalry between shamans (Devereux, 

 1957 b) but partly also to the fact that the woman Melyikha : had, shortly before, 

 oscillated back and forth between the two men to such an extent that during this 

 period she could not even get credit at the local stores, because no one knew 

 which of the two men was her current husband and would assume responsibility 

 for the debts she contracted on a given day. When, at long last, she finally 

 settled down with Ahma Huma:re, Hivsu: Tupo :ma accepted her decision 

 without resentment, as a good Mohave should. Thus, since there was no 

 hostility between the erstwhile rivals, my friendship with Hivsu : Tupo :ma did 

 not impair my friendly relations with Ahma Huma :re. However, the some- 

 what grotesque aspects of their former rivalry led to a certain amount of em- 

 barrassment between the two men, who avoided each other, presumably because 

 they realized that they had made themselves quite ridiculous in this particular 

 situation. 



The statement that the patient had been "discharged" from the hospital as an 

 incurable tuberculotic also calls for comment. It simply means that the dying 

 man was removed from the hospital at his own request and that of his family, 

 partly in order to make a final attempt to cure him by shamanistic means, 

 and partly because the Mohave wish to die in their own homes. It most defi- 

 nitely does not mean that the hospital authorities callously discharged the 

 patient because he was incurable, nor even that they did not do everything pos- 

 sible to discourage his removal from the hospital. In fact, such discharges at the 

 point of death, against medical advice, are a frequent cause of friction between 

 the Mohave and the hospital authorities. 



This case history shows that the test of the correctness of a diagnosis is the 

 effectiveness of the treatment and therefore leads us directly to the presentation 

 of those cases in which the patient's condition was erroneously diagnosed as 

 hiwey lak. 



