132 Notes on the Customs of Mota, Banks Islands. 



15. Doctors. 



All serious diseases are ascribed either to charms such as 

 are above described or to the direct malignant action of 

 tamate. The gismana, or doctors, treated them with counter 

 charms and incantations. 



The gismana were not those who made charms to cause 

 disease. They sincerely believed in their power, though they 

 practised deceit. They sucked the part of the body where 

 the pain lay, and then spat out something which was sup- 

 posed to have been causing the pain. For a toothache they 

 would apply a small roll of leaves with a grub concealed in 

 it, which, when the toothache passed away, was shown as 

 having been drawn out of the tooth. They would stroke 

 the afflicted part, singing songs the while, or blow upon it 

 after chewing certain leaves. Some things, also, they did 

 with the notion of healing qualities in the leaves or poultices 

 applied. 



[Sir John Lubbock, after eiving an account of endless charms against sick- 

 ness in his Origin of Civilisation, makes the extraordinary assertion that 

 "savages are rarely ill" (p. 45). This is one among very many ill-considered 

 statements in which that work abounds. Savages are very frequently ill, and 

 their languages are full of words for all manner of diseases, for charms to 

 cause them, and for counter-charms against them. 



The methods of the Mota gismana are repeated by the medicine men among 

 savages everywhere. That they really believe in their power over sickness, as 

 Mr. Codrington says, I am fully convinced. One of our native mission-agents 

 in Fiji assured me very earnestly that he had the power of expelling disease- 

 causing spirits, and he gave me a minute description of his treatment. He 

 passed his hands over the patient's body until he detected the spirit by a 

 peculiar fluttering sensation in his finger ends. He then endeavoured to draw 

 it down to one of the extremities — a foot or a hand. Much patience and care 

 were required, because these spirits are very cunning and will double 

 back, and hide themselves in the trunk of the body if you give them 

 a chance. " And even," he said, "when you get the df mon into a leg or an 

 arm which you can grasp with your fingers, you must take care, or he will 

 escape you. He will lodge in the joints, and hide himself among the bones. 

 Hard, indeed, is it to get him out of a joint ! But when you have drawn him 

 down into a finger, or a toe, you must pull him out with a sudden jerk, and 

 throw him far away, and blow after him lest he should return."— L. F.] 



16. Shadows. 



The word niniai in Mota corresponds exactly to the 

 English " shadow," as used by those who have not taken 

 up the Latin word " reflection" for the image given by rays 

 of light. It means a definite form, but unsubstantial, 

 having no independent existence. It is not shade as in a 

 wood or a house; and it is rightly applied to an image 

 given by interception of rays of light, or by reflection. To 



